Breaking news…..Summer hasn’t arrived yet

I am slowly ticking off all the things I want to make when this Summer finally arrives and one of those things is getting a bit more out of my comfort zone style-wise.

 

The project started with an amazing soft cotton remnant from Joelandsons. As soon as it arrived I wanted to work with it and decided a dress was in order, but one which didn’t have too many pieces as I only had a metre and a half and I realised pattern matching on this large scale print would be pretty difficult.

I always look online at the Burdastyle website for inspiration rather than search through the 3 years worth of magazines I own. Once I find the pattern I like I dig out the actual publication and get the details from there.

It did help that the dress I chose was featured on the front cover of the March 2016 edition, number 102B.

I loved the pleated neckline on this as well as the loose, comfortable style. I usually avoid gathers round the waist, so this was a diversion for me.  The dress also has sleeves, which makes it much more practical.

The first thing I did was eliminate the welt pockets from the front for a number of reasons. My fabric was very thin and I also felt they would get lost in the folds. Really I didn’t want to have to match them either so I substituted inseam pockets instead. I also lined it using the original pattern minus facings, in a soft cotton lawn.

The front is a single piece with ties at the waist to give it some shape. (The colour here is most very accurate in real life)

The back is much more fitted with an invisible zip and back waist seam. There is a panel at the bottom, , which is just basically a rectangle folded in half, so no hem to do, yay!

I managed to do a good job with the invisible zip, tacking it in first (for a change!)  and pattern matched the upper back too. The sleeves have a lovely dart in the cap which is lost in this fabric unfortunately. I think the pattern would be very nice in a plain fabric to show the style lines better.

I always try and think what I learned new on every project and for this one I found out I can look ok in a dress with a belt.

I also discovered that the thread I’ve been sewing with for years, Gutterman all-purpose has a hidden feature

All these years sewing and I didn’t realise you can just pull the end off to release the start of the thread.

In other news I’ll tell you that there are different sized machine needles for sewing different fabrics. Only kidding!

I’m in the middle of Me-Made-May and if you’re interested you can find me over on Instagram most days under KarenJKayes. It all started well but I’m finding daily photos a bit of a bind when I really just want to get on with sewing??!!  I’ll do a round-up at the end to see what I learned but have found I am loving Instagram for seeing what people are getting up to.