Paisley's Back

Updated Caftan - New Look 6715

          I've always liked paisley and simply designed flowing dresses.  It's the old hippie in me.   I wore a caftan-style evening dress to my senior prom - which telegraphs my exact age, I suppose.  Despite the fact that nowadays I'm looking for professional business clothes, New Look 6715, a slightly fitted caftan designed to be made in soft fabrics, was a natural for me.  View A called my name.  It's been in  my pattern stash for a couple of years.

         This year  paisley is on trend and so are dresses and classic jackets, because of the "equestrienne" thing.  I like the look of simple silky dresses made of scarf-like materials, worn under tailored jackets. It looks  relaxed and luxe at the same time.    Among the paisleys in my stash,  I had  a multicolored paisley charmeuse remnant from Joannes, with a scarf-like look to it. So it was time to dig out the fabric and pattern and get going.  I realize I'm breaking the adage:   if you were old enough to wear a trend the first time it was in fashion, you are too old to wear it now.  Let's ignore that, okay?

Here is the fabric and pattern ready to go.

My original intention was to add trim to the front of the dress, like on the pattern drawing,  but the finished dress looked too polished to add any type of trim.  I added, instead, a self-fabric shawl collar/band with ties.  The tie allows the v, which is deep, to be more modest, for business purposes, and looks great under a jacket.

Here is the caftan unbelted, two views, neither of which  photographed in exactly the right color.  Looking at these, its clear the dress looks better without tights.

Here is the dress belted, and under a jacket.

From Pattern Review:  I wear a size 8 retail so made a size 12.

I never used this kind of fabric before. The fabric frayed badly, and did not hold a finger pressing even long enough for the fleet second it takes to grab the iron. The pattern intended for the sleeves, hem, and side vents to be machine hemmed but, after machine hemming the sleeves, I did not like the look so hand hemmed the rest. However, because of the wild fraying, I am reluctant to rip out the machine hemmed sleeves. They'll just stay that way.

The V neckline in the caftan is low, which is okay except the facing makes it stand away from the body when you lean forward, so rather than adding trim -which did not seem like it would actually look good on the finished dress - I decided to use the sash as a narrow band, extending a bit into the open V, which solves the modesty issue. The band is folded into a narrow shawl collar around the back neck edge, with the ties loose at the base of the V for tying.


Despite the design modifications and the fraying fabric, I loved this pattern and am already thinking about other fabrics to make it again.