Purple Arrow Dress

The full extent of the fabric I bought in Japan remains undocumented, and will probably continue to be so since I'm not a huge fan of "haul" content. Also, not sure that people care or that I'm organised enough quite frankly. I mean, here we are in late January and this is my first post about something I made in October/November last year. What a world. 

In any case, this dress is made from fabric I acquired in Japan while we were living there in 2025. I think it was from my last trip to Nippori (fabric town of Tokyo). I had been on the lookout for a version of this traditional Japanese print with the arrow like design and was pretty happy with this lovely find with its purple and gold. 

After making the (somewhat experimental) Zero Waste dress in October, I knew I wanted to replicate a similar idea with this fabric. But I also wanted in built sleeves, with cuffs, and collar with a full button front. Easy? Not really, but for some unknown reason, I'm the kind of person who thinks I should just do it anyway and it will surely work out. 

It kind of worked out. 

The biggest change was that I tried to get away with fewer pintuck/pleat things around the waist to gather it in. I compensated by making them deeper, but it didn't really work for some reason. The result was that the skirt was not as full as I would have liked it. I also severely overestimated how long the sleeves needed to be and it was just all too much fabric there to start with. And then I just turned up the fabric to make the cuffs, but they got totally lost in the pattern. 

Oh, and that collar I wanted? Nope! I managed to cut the back neckline too low for it to fit properly, so threw that out the window pretty quickly. Ahh, things that went wrong; fun times. I'm not above sharing all the things that went wrong. Stuff goes wrong all the time for me. I guess what I don't have is photos of the things that went wrong. Do I need them? Hopefully you can imagine it all and believe me. 

Anyway, changes were needed, so changes I made. I cut off the extra fabric at the sleeves and reshaped the sides of the skirt, including taking out and reinstalling the pockets. Then I pieced together any scraps I had to make cuff fabric for the sleeves that would have the pattern going the other way. Then, since I was piecing everything anyway, I kept going and had enough for a thin belt to go with it. 

Finally I went to Spotlight to get gold buttons that would match the gold in the fabric and really elevate the dress. Those buttons were the most expensive part (not counting all the time I'd spent on the dress of course). They were easily three times more expensive than the fabric. Good thing the perfectly matching belt buckle was already in my stash.