Vivacious Trillium Dress with outside facings

Anna Maria reached out in December to see if I would be interested in sewing something with her new lawn line, Vivacious (shipping this summer) for Free Spirit and I happily said yes. Friends of this blog know that for years I have sewn many a thing with AMH voile, including but not limited to this pattern prototype that never became a pattern, this Pierrot and this Geranium for Clementine, this red feather Ruby dress for me (which became the dress on the cover of the Ruby pattern) and so on.

I’m truly excited that Free Spirit decided to bring back this lighter fabric, which is better suited for apparel than the quilting cotton AMH’s designs are usually printed on.The original “voile” that Little Folks, Pastry Line, and Field Study was printed on is perhaps a bit more lightweight than this new lawn substrate? I can’t be certain, but it could be the same thing under a different name. I do know that it is a bit lighter and silkier than Liberty lawn, and lighter than Cotton+Steel lawn, if you ever bought any of that. As far as the print design itself, eagle-eyed AMH fanatics will recognize this print from the Good Folks line, albeit in different colors (I used the red, blue, purple, and green version of this print in my recently-posted Shower Curtain Tutorial, and for this Charlie Dress for Clementine). Ok, Moment for Fabric Nerds is over now, let’s move along.

I made this Trillium Dress out of the two Buttoned up prints (in colors “Candy” and "Fresh") and added the facings on the outside: I used my Super Fun Facings Trick to make the edges of the facings easy to topstitch down, sewed them to the inside of the neckline, then flipped them to the outside (rather than the other way round as instructed in the pattern).

As you can see I also used the free sleeve add-on (pattern piece available via this tutorial) and added some width (about 7” at center) for more drama plus a cuff to the end of the sleeve. I took some photos so I could post a tutorial on how to add the cuff at some point in the future.

Taking a cue from the colors, I felt it necessary to incorporate macarons from a shop down the street into the photoshoot somehow. It takes energy to dress up and photograph oneself, energy that can be accessed directly from the bloodstream if one consumes a colorful array of items made from pure sugar and food coloring in rapid succession.

Some in-progress pics: I snapped some photos of it without the pink accents (and using rubber bands to gather the sleeves at the ends LOL) because I actually like it in green too. Not sure — when I get the sample back should I take the pink off? I’m trying to figure out if I will wear it either way. When I showed this pic (below) to Elli, she said “You look like an Easter Basket full of grass.”

It’s the socks.

Free Spirit provided me with the fabric for free in return for the use of the samples for their Vivacious Trunk Show, which will be going around (presumably?) to fabric shops that carry the Vivacious lawns when they ship this summer. Here’s a peek at the other two things I made with the lawn:

You can find the Trillium Dress (designed for bust measurements 34” - 59”) in both PDF and print, my shop!

PS. All of the Trillium tutorials are over on the Trillium page.