Coo! I had no idea i would get such positive reactions to my plan to play dress up – thank you! I feel so much better. I don’t feel any more sane, but I am more than happy to be slightly mad.

I spent some time last night going over the pattern envelope and reading the construction instructions. This view, with the overlay, is rather sweet, but has one huge flaw: button fastenings. Buttons I can do, but the corresponding holes are a great hole in my sewing repertoire. I simply cannot get them right, and I am not enough of a seamstress to be fiddling with the pattern. Naturally I blame my machine. So that is one thing against it. Another is the overlay itself, which, while lovely, no doubt needs to be made in some kind of floaty light fabric which will cause me untold nightmares. Finally, it has short sleeves: it’s winter, and I don’t want to ruin the look by having to resort to my sweatshirt.

So to view B. Numerous things in its favour: long sleeves, a drawstring fastening, can be made out of something sturdy and robust. It’s also got a sash – how can I not? But on reading through the requirements I found that in addition to the metres and metres of fabric it also needs almost 3 metres of batiste for the lining of the skirt. What on earth is batiste?

Well, apparently it’s a dry shampoo, which is what most of my search results came back with. But it is also ‘the softest of the lightweight opaque fabrics’, according to Wikipedia’s Batiste entry. Presumably this is the kind of fabric that was once freely available for undergarments, slips and linings, but I’ve never seen it anywhere. So I continued my internet search to find a stockist.

I found hankerchiefs, a christian doll in a nightdress, a roller blind with jewels and then finally batiste by the metre at Cottonpatch. It doesn’t say what colour it is though, and there isn’t a picture, so I think my next move will be a trip into MacCulloch and Wallis to see what they have to say.

And this is before we even get to the main part of the dress. I hope you realise this could take some time.