Picnic Dress Gabby

We seem to be experiencing another summer heatwave here in Sydney - and these things seem to be coming more regularly - so yesterday, when I noticed myself pulling out my Starry, Starry Gabby to wear yet again, it felt like the right time for whipping up another Gabby dress.

Ah, but what fabric to use? I'm trying to sew from my stash, so I looked around the sewing area of the study and noticed this fabric I'd bought to make my son a short sleeved shirt using a cool vintage pattern (see? not entirely selfish!).

Hmmm... Maybe not really his style? I asked him what he thought, he thought definitely not. Within about 5 seconds of that rejection, the fabric was on the ground and the Gabby pattern pieces were strewn about :).  I wish I could tell you the fabric was a cool 100% cotton or linen, but sadly it's just a cheap poly-cotton from Lincraft - I simply fell for the oversized checks.

Speaking of oversized checks, there seem to be lots of wonderful gingham garments around but THIS Celestial dress of Rosie's is the one that fired up my imagination most recently.  I absolutely love both Rosie's dress and the bucketload of inspiration pictures she's posted alongside it.

Oh and I should mention that when I posted a picture of this dress to Instagram shortly after finishing it, Carolyn commented that she was just finishing off a very similar dress - so look out for Carolyn's gingham dress on her blog VERY soon (I'm already expecting to prefer hers to mine!)

I'm sure the Gabby is not the perfect summer dress for everyone, but it really works for me, and now I've made it a few times (the Starry one, this one in a stretch, and another recent, unblogged dress in a heavy Nani Iron cotton) it comes together ridiculously fast - so this dress was all done in a day, in between chatting with the kids and feeding them. As I've made and blogged it before and it's such a straightforward dress, I won't review the pattern itself and instead I'll just list the changes I made this time around:

• Lengthened the sleeves about 2cm.
• Added 16cm length all around, then removed 16cm length after the dress was all done bar the hems, then noticed it was a bit short (I'm about 5'8"), so left an overlocked edge instead of a hem.
• Added in-seam pockets, the size based on putting my hand down on the fabric, and position based on trying on the partially sewn dresss and pinning the top and bottom of a space where my hand naturally wanted to slide into a pocket. I didn't have enough fabric to be able to pattern match pockets to the dress, but the pocket pieces match each other and are symmetric too. 
• Added bust darts to assist in matching up the checks on the side seams and because that little bit of excess length in the front edges looked like the right amount for a bust dart.

Spot the bust darts! Oh and btw, the front has moved off centre in this picture. 

Pattern matching and in-seam pockets

That's all, but I'll be back soon with the Nani Iro version and a dress in the fabric of the year (ah, but which year?).



See you soon

- Gabrielle x