Tessuti Awards 2010

About my Linen and Lace

• Pattern Used: My own design
• Fabrics Used: Wheat zin linen (bodice), medium ivory linen and today's peach linen (skirt), and my second favourite doilies
• Time To Create: Ages! I spent a lot of time pfaffing and quietly thinking about this dress. The actual sewing part took about three weeks on and off.
• Dress Influenced By: Everything old is new again! Buffets, doilies, gin drinking dresses and pleated skirts that belong on a lawn tennis court in a sepia photograph. It’s a rare occasion that you can legitimately wear a doily. So I decided that I would incorporate a lace doily as the ‘lace’ part of the linen and lace theme. I wanted to create a dress with a fitted bodice, waist, and a full skirt, a nod to 1950s silhouettes. Selecting my favourite doilies took the best part of a month, outside work hours. I sourced a few doilies at the Camberwell markets, and my brother and his partner gave me a bag of doilies that they had inherited from their elderly Hungarian neighbours. This dress is ‘my second favourite doily dress’ aka ‘the linen buffet dress’, so called because it’s made of a veritable smorgasbord of linen (3 different pieces) and the doily that I used in the neckline was a sort of ‘table runner’ doily, the kind that you might find on the buffet table. Or at least the kind you might find on any good buffet table. I wanted to create a dress that moved, and that you could move in. The full, pleated skirt means that this dress is ideal for: bike riding, lunging, skipping, lawn tennis, semi-competitive mahjong, table tennis and drinking gin. In fact, ladies, there is almost nothing you cannot do in this dress. The one proviso is that if you are enjoying the summer sunshine, do be sure to sunscreen your back. The dress can be worn with or without the sash, depending on whether a sash is one of your favourite things. The smaller lace doily in the sash can be worn at the back, front or side. And if you ever find yourself short of a coaster, the doily on the sash makes for an ideal base for hot and cold beverages on a table.
• Additional Information: A very big thank you to Moira, for the loan of your sewing machine, and to Ms Hanrahan, for the loan of your overlocker, while I was dressmaking in Perth WA. Thanks also to Tessa for the photos and to Jackie and Yestin for the bag of doilies. All of them! Thanks also to the lovely Colin Bellert who gave me a calico bodice pattern cut to fit me. The pattern formed the basis for this bodice and many other dresses, and makes sewing without a dress maker's dummy so much easier.

About Me

• Name: Kirsten Aaskov
• State: VIC
• Sewing Since: Age 8
• My Experience: Under the careful guidance of Ruth, my first sewing project was a pair of stretch floral culottes with a matching top. Very fetching. I spent most of the 1990s making scrunchies and endless pairs of tartan shorts (with cuffs). Happily I have left the tartan shorts behind and moved on to dresses. I have definitely made at least one tartan dress. It is only in the last three years that I have developed the patience to properly fit patterns, and to pay attention to the small sewing details.
• My Sewing Goals: If I ever become a mid-week lady or lady of leisure, I would love to take a course in textiles and design. In my next life, I'd like to be a costume designer.
• Additional Information: