All Hallows No. 1

There is something rather exciting about the moment a length of fabric stops being simply fabric.

For the past few days, ten metres of black cotton scattered with colourful, grinning pumpkins has been sitting in the Woven Witch workroom waiting for its turn. Today, the first cuts were finally made.

All Hallows No. 1 has begun.

I wanted this dress to feel unmistakably Halloween without becoming something that could only be worn for one night of the year. The fabric is wonderfully chaotic — pumpkins in faded orange, pink, blue, purple and ghostly green, crowded together against black with tiny stars scattered between them. Some grin, some scowl, and some look as though they know something you don't.

In other words, it was impossible to resist.

All Hallows will be a simple dress with beautiful flared sleeves, allowing the print to do most of the talking. The first will be mine. It is currently in that peculiar stage of dressmaking where everything has been carefully cut and prepared, but the finished garment exists mostly in my imagination — a neat pile of pumpkin-covered pieces waiting to become something.

And this one may not be entirely alone.

There is enough of this fabric for me to consider making two further All Hallows dresses, which would make this a tiny edition of only three. No. 1 would remain mine, while No. 2 and No. 3 may eventually find their way into the Woven Witch shop.

I rather like the idea that there could only ever be three.

Not a collection endlessly reproduced, but three dresses cut from the same strange field of pumpkins, each made individually and then sent off into the world — apart from the first, which is staying firmly in my wardrobe.

For now, though, there are no shop dresses and no finished photographs.

There is simply All Hallows No. 1, freshly cut and waiting for its first stitches.

And that's where her story begins.

— Gani
Woven Witch 🖤