"Red Fox Vintage" dress - barkcloth edition

Years ago, someone gave me a few yards of barkcloth, which I've been holding onto, waiting for the right project.  When I first rubbed off the vintage dress from Red Fox Vintage, I knew I wanted to make it up in that barkcloth in the end.  So I have!  This post is mostly about barkcloth, a little about sewing, and then pictures of the finished garment. 

WHAT IS BARKCLOTH?

Authentic barkcloth is fabric made from tree bark.  It is also called tapa cloth or kapa.  It is indigenous to various Pacific Islands, Africa, and elsewhere.  In North America, the Kwakiutl (Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw) tribe historically made fabric from long, fibrous pieces of cedar bark (the inner bark, not the brittle outer bark.  Cedar bark fabric is woven, but Polynesian tapa/kapa is made from wider pieces pounded thin.  Traditional barkcloth is decorated with richly-tinted natural dyes. 

In the 1920's, in France, people's interest in tribal cultures and ethnic-looking textiles led to the production of a fabric called "cretonne" that had a stout linen/hemp or cotton/rayon crossweave and printed floral patterns.  (Cretonne and chintz have a longer history and some overlap.)

In the 1930's, in America, faux barkcloth really took off.  Over the next decades, cotton barkcloth was found in home decor and clothing. 

Tapa Cloth, 19th century. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum [Public domain]

Barkcloth often has a nubby Momie weave.  The patterns are usually large in scale (suitable for home decor).  They are printed on the cloth, and sometimes don't fully saturate the surface, thus making the nubby weave more prominent.  Or, with wear and washing, the pebbly protrusions of the weave lose color faster than the creases.  Different decades saw different motifs slide in and out of popularity:

Botanical pattern on skirt-weight cotton barkcloth.

1950s pattern design on barkcloth tablecloth. Atomic Age botanic pattern.

1920's --- florals
1930's and 40's --- floral, tropical, Oriental (these remain popular in subsequent decades, but I won't re-type them!).  Rich, fully saturated colors. 
1950's --- softer colors, abstract leaf or feather designs
1960's --- science-themes, UFO's, abstracts, flower power
1970's --- whatever you can imagine!  Back to using rich colors and earth tones. 
1980's --- re-creations of the traditional florals

Honolulu barkcloth. Fiona Bradley from Australia [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

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So what about my barkcloth?  I do not know if it is vintage.  Its selvedge label says it was "Vat Dyed.  Printed in U.S.A. Copyright (c) Braemore Textiles".  As far as I can tell, Braemore Textiles is currently in business, supplying home decor fabrics to retailers (though I can't find a website for Braemore Textiles itself!), so maybe my barkcloth is modern.  It is in good condition, made of upholstery-weight cotton.  The print is large-scale flowers and foliage, rendered in deep browns, taupes, and reds.  The background is brown with a tinge of purple in it.  The colors satisfy me for the same reason the rayon challis I recently posted about satisfies me: this deeply-saturated autumn color scheme reminds me of the rich pastel art in children's books. 

SEWING

I don't have a ton to say about the construction of this dress.  Here are some bullet points:

• The pattern used up nearly every scrap of fabric!  I have only a few scraps leftover. 
• I'd planned on using a deep brown velvet for the collar, but at the last minute opted for a lighter golden brown velvet with swirly texture, since it was better by my face.
  
• I lined the collar piece with some silk habutai, leftover from this project.
• I used snap tape instead of buttons. 
• Order of assembly: bodice darts; bodice shoulders; collar and neck facing; sleeve hems; sleeves to bodice; side seams of bodice.  Then the skirt: skirt darts; side seams; bottom hems; CF and CB (sew OVER hems!), waist seam, closures. 

pattern layout

neck facing turned in

chalk line for where I'll sew facing down.

bodice coming together

hemming sleeves with rayon hem tape

installing sleeves

Center Back hem and kick-pleat

COST

From stash (either free or bought a while ago): fabric, rayon seam binding, interfacing.
$1.40 for a half-yard of snap-tape. 

FINISHED

I 100% love this dress.  There's nothing to quibble about!  The cotton's thickness makes it quite warm to wear, despite the short sleeves, so it's a fall/winter outfit.  It took time and testing to get the pattern and fit it right, but I'm happy with the result, and happy that I used this gorgeous fabric in a gorgeous way.

And now, for contrast, here are the three iterations of this dress in a row: the charcoal one from the vintage shop, the yellow quilting cotton one (my wearable muslin), and the barkcloth finale!  The first two pics link to my related blog posts.  The last pic links to my post about the pattern alterations that led from dress two to dress three. 

vintage rayon dress

first muslin

final product!

Yay!  I have a pretty dress!