An’s seersucker Hanami dress |

This was written by An from StraightGrain for the Miss Matatabi Makers series.

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Hello everyone! I’m An from StraightGrain, and I’m so excited to be part of Miss Matatabi Makers.

When I saw this elephants fabric in Frances‘ shop, I immediately knew it would be a hit with my 4-year-old daughter, Norah. I could just imagine her whining, “But I want to wear my elephants dress today, mommy!”.

I decided to make a simple dress from it – busy prints like these do not ask for many bells and whistles. I used my Hanami pattern, and replaced the flutter sleeves with semi-long sleeves because I wanted to do a little experiment with the cuffs. The experiment was not a big success, though, so I just cut them off, creating little cap sleeves. I think it looks much better now – the combination of the longer sleeves and busy print made the dress just too heavy.

I love this fabric for so many reasons. First of all, it is a lovely, light seersucker. I’ve always been a fan of seersucker, but for some reason, it mostly comes in pastel colours, and often in stripes. I have nothing against pastel stripes, but the bold colours and the elephant print make this elephants seersucker truly unique. Secondly, as I expected, my daughter loves the print. She’s so fond of the little baby elephants which show up in the print here and there. Thirdly, the fabric washes up very well: the colours stay bright and bold. And finally, this fabric does not need to be ironed. Because of the seersucker texture, there are simply no wrinkles or creases in this fabric. Hurray for that!