Anna’s made a second maxi dress for the summer using Betsy Splash from the new Alice Caroline Exclusives collection. Anna tells us about her summer Maxi Dress.
“When Alice and I talked about the inspiration for her Halcyon Daze Exclusive Liberty collection, I loved hearing about the creative process that goes into each beautiful fabric. For Betsy Splash, she talks about visiting David Hockney’s pool paintings exhibition as a child and how the colours have been ingrained in her mind ever since. This Betsy colourway is a look back through a hazy lens to those imagined colours. I simply love the idea that going to an exhibition many years ago can still impact on Alice’s design process today. I thought this would be the perfect fabric to make my second maxi dress using the Simplicity pattern (S8910).”
“I used the burrito method to line the bodice of the dress again. I thought I could do it from memory from the Camberwell Peacock dress, but forgot to sew around the neckline first so had to google it again for the tutorial. That said, it’s a super easy method of lining a bodice, I just needed a little reminder of the order of things! I used a few scraps of our white on white Lodden that I had left over from another project – I simply sewed pieces together to make it big enough for the pattern pieces.”
“I can’t believe how much I love this dress – it’s the perfect shape for me (which I find hard in some dress patterns). The pockets – yes I’m going to rave about the pockets again – lovely and deep to fit whatever you need to pop inside (sunglasses, tissues, phone, purse). I really don’t like to wear dresses without pockets now – if I buy one without, I have to unpick the side seams and add one in! This dress uses a fair amount of Liberty fabric (3.5m for my size) but it’s so worth it – a gorgeous floaty dress with room to expand for lunch or dinner! I can’t wait to wear it on my holidays this summer.”
