Murphy's law for sundress sewing

Back in June, when Heather launched the summer sundress sew-a-long, I was one of the first to sign up. An August deadline? Ample time to sew a carload of sundresses! Or? 

For one reason or another I wanted butterfly fabric for my sundress, nothing else would do. 

When I found this picture I realized I'd unconsciously been looking to reproduce a favorite dress from way back, when Canal Couture and Sartorial Sweatshop were very cute little girls with a love for icecream and colorful hair accessories.

That dress deserved a remake! I visited every fabric store and market I could think of, but no sign of butterfly fabric. Finally I tracked down this Robert Kaufman fabric in Hong Kong.

This beautiful print with tiny golden details was certainly worth waiting for. In the meantime I ordered a sundress pattern from a Dutch online store. Not the cheapest option, but it was in stock and should arrive the next day.

Oops, sorry! Did we say in stock? We meant to say it was on backorder!

Three weeks later: still on backorder. 

June turned into July and we were in the middle of a heatwave. I really needed that new sundress! Plan B:

A Knipmode dress and a cotton jersey. Nice pattern, beautiful fabric but bad pairing of the two. Plan B was a mess.

Still no sign of Simplicity 1803. Mind you, I paid the equivalent of $22 for that silly no show pattern! Some phone calls later I discovered someone in the shop mixed up pattern codes. To make things worse: it had been in stock all the time but I could have waited till Christmas without anyone noticing.

But, allways look at the bright side of life: the number one project in the 2015 summer sewing queue is ready for take off!

Now August arrived and I still did not make a new sundress.

Time for plan C: another cotton jersey and a TNT pattern, see the first picture of this post.

As soon as I started cutting this dress the weather changed from unusually hot to pretty bad, even for Dutch standards. It's the coldest August since 1924. So let's put another log on the fire while I'm finally hemming my sundress!