Twirl to Me Dress

Months ago now, Debbie of Lily Sage & Co put out the call for volunteers to test out a girl's dress pattern, the Twirl to Me dress (this one).  She'd already made several for her daughters - this one, and this one, and this early hint - and they all looked rather special, so I very quickly put my hand up, assuming the dress would be right up my daughter's alley.

At the time I sewed this my daughter was a very tall 7 year old (135cm tall or 4'5"), so I chose to sew the dress in a size 8.  The pattern didn't include a height chart, but the chest measurement for a size 8 looked to fit my daughter's measurements and Debbie's daughters are tall so I assumed the dress would be drafted for tall girls.

The dress is a trapeze shape with a high-low hem and a clever shoulder straps that culminate in a bow on the front.

The armhole melds in with the half crescent on the front of the dress to make a lovely shape...

... and the dress is fantastic for twirling and dancing!

These photos were taken several months ago at the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the dress was already verging on too tight and too short.  The chest width would have been perfect if I'd done everything right, but I cut the dress out late at night and mistakenly cut the front with a centre seam. To try to make the curved bodice fit the shape of the underarm curve neatly as it's supposed to (the pieces do line up exactly if you cut out and sew accurately!) I sewed a narrow centre front seam and slightly narrowed the side seams only on the front dress pieces, but I think I still lost about 1.5cm in the total circumference.

I know the dress doesn't look too short in these photos, but I guess we all have different lengths we're prepared to wear, and this just felt too short to my daughter...

Sadly my daughter only wore the dress for these photos, and it's now well and truly too small.  I don't have a younger daughter or niece to pass this dress onto either, so it's now free to a good home :).

My sewing on this dress isn't immaculate, but it's not terrible either. The fabric is 100% cotton, apart from a little bit of cotton-poly bias binding under the arms and there are two sweet pink buttons on the back. The white patch on the inside of the dress at centre front is interfacing - this stabilises the hole where the bow comes through at the front of the dress:

The chest circumference is 64cm / 25" (with my extra centre front seam!!), and the dress measures 60cm / 25" at the front from the top of the half crescent to the hemline (and obviously longer in the back).

Let me know in the comments if you have a little girl a bit smaller than mine who'd like this dress - I'm happy to mail worldwide.


See you soon


- Gabrielle xx

Jacket Wrap

My last post - and all the lovely drapey jackets I keep reading about on people's blogs - reminded me of another drapey jacket, a much lighter jacket, one that I made last year and never got around to blogging.

I think this one's a pretty nice shape, though the fabric I chose to use wasn't right for the jacket. More on the fabric later, but the pattern looks OK doesn't it?  Don't answer; that's a trick question!

Before you commit to an opinion have a look at the jacket from a couple more angles... it was a windy day when I took these photos, but I thought they showed the drapey, fluid nature of the jacket quite well!

OK, enough photos for now!

Let's move on to the pattern, shall we?

The pattern is one I tested last year for Rosie Martin of DIY Couture fame. And yet... And yet if you know anything about Rosie's approach, you'll know she's all about liberating sewers from their patterns! So when I say it's a pattern I tested, well it wasn't a set of pattern pieces so much as a set of gorgeous, clearly illustrated instructions for sewing a drapey wrap top WITHOUT a pattern. I don't want to give the game away, but basically with this pattern Rosie shows you how to work with a top you already have and use it as a template for a a drapey wrap top - which can of course be a jacket if you so desire :).

The particularly cool thing about this sort of pattern is that it lets you make a whole range of different tops (or jackets or dresses) - you choose the fit you already like, and you choose the lengths and widths and hem shapes, and you choose what seam finishes you want, and so on. That probably sounds so broad that you're wondering what's actually included - well, there's still plenty to cover:

• tools needed for the job
• fabric information 
• diagrams of the wrap top design and of variations to the design
• easy drafting instructions 
• suggested order of construction and construction tips, with a LOT of photos and diagrams to make all steps very clear

OK, over to the fabric now. The fabric is really interesting; it's a double sided fabric I bought from Tessuti fabrics ages ago on a whim. It has a matte blue side that I've used as the outer or "right side" of the fabric, and a cold slippery black side that I've used as the lining or "wrong side" of the fabric. Unfortunately it turns out I don't like the cold feel of the black side on my skin, and the 3/4 dolman the sleeves I chose to make feel too narrow when I wear them over long sleeves (in these photos I'm wearing a 3/4 sleeve t-shirt underneath, and you can see those t-shirt sleeves are doing a bit of bunching under the jacket sleeves). So this jacket has ended up something for layering over sleeveless clothes - I'm thinking my lovely full length bias cut dress in layers of black chiffon - when my arms are up for it :).

Most of the wrap top examples shown in Rosie's instructions have a collar band and a waist tie, and all of her examples had finished edges - but this is the shape I was after, and although I generally like a finish to my jacket edges, in this case I couldn't think of anything that would look as neat as carefully cut edges. And I have to say, this fabric has not frayed in the slightest since I made it.

Of course you have to take my review with a grain of salt, as the pattern testing experience just necessarily results in bias, BUT I think this "pattern" (or the book it's going to be in) would be perfect for an adventurous beginner - someone with lots of ideas, but without a clear idea of how to get there. No advanced sewing knowledge or skills are required, so really anyone with a reasonable amount of attention to detail could use the instructions and make something from them. 

And for sewists with a bit more experience? I can't speak for everyone, but for me Rosie's approach was exciting and inspiring.  I guess I normally tend to think of sewing projects in terms of available patterns, plus I'm quite risk averse, so to be honest it took me a little while to work up the courage to cut into my fabric - but once my scissors had started cutting I relaxed and started thinking of all the possibilities!  

See you soon

- Gabrielle

Converging Lines: Brasilia-Style!

When Rachel announced her Brasilia dress and asked for a few pattern testers, I jumped. 

There was already a stampede. For a few anxious hours I thought I was too late; too many volunteers had jumped in before me and the time difference was doing me no favours, but HOORAY (ie time to dance like a loon), I was IN!

wandering off with a rock in hand - cheap prop, that's all! 

And as you can see, I've now made myself a very fetching, very stripe-some Brasilia dress. Very fitted too, and that's the fit the dress is designed to have - honestly, for once I feel like I've nailed the fit. With some of that fabric that no one won at my giveaway - huh! Well if you won't take it, I'll have to sew it myself, so there! 

first jumping, now dancing?

As you can see, this is a fitted sheath dress, but it's got these really interesting details - bust darts that emerge from the centre front, and triangles at the side that came about when Rachel played around with fish eye darts. I loved the look of these details in the tech drawing, and I thought stripes would really show them off.  

My dress didn't need radical modifications from the original pattern - but I started out with a toile down to hip level made out of some funky black stretch fabric (hmm, this might also have been left over from my giveaway). I sewed all the seam lines and dart lines in neon lime thread against the black so it was really easy to see where I needed to adjust the pattern, and since I don't have a handy late night fitting buddy I sewed CB together and pretended my zip was going in CF.

I took off about 3cm in total in bodice length and added that to the skirt length, and took in the upper bodice at CF and CB (I have really narrow shoulders). And I ignored the grainline recommendation to cut the side triangles at an angle. Other than that it was just tinkering.

I did consider adding a waist seam, so that I could cut the front skirt on the fold and also cut the front bodice with the stripes in a different direction (I really wanted the upper bodice stripes to splay out towards my shoulders rather than converging), BUT this would have made the bodice stretch the wrong way. As it is, I felt like I was pushing it by cutting out those side triangles at an angle... but I really, really wanted those particular lines to be angled in towards my waist - optical illusion, hey - with the darkest (green) line running along the lower edge of the triangle.

And I have to admit I toyed with the idea of some sneaky pockets extending down from the triangles inside the skirt, but I reckon they would have looked pretty awful in stretch sheath dress. Maybe if someone makes this dress with a bell skirt they'd have room for pockets.  

Rachel's pattern doesn't include seam allowances, and even though I've sewn Burda magazine patterns before, this felt like a first for me (usually when I trace a Burda pattern I'll add the SA as I trace). Interestingly this felt really liberating - it was great to really see where the stitching line was supposed to sit instead of imputing it, and I felt like this gave me a better chance of success with any adjustments.

So, what else to say? Well, with a fabric like this and a pattern like this, both all about showing off interesting design lines, obviously you have to take a lot of care with how the lines meet up. I took a lot of care over my cutting out, but CB and CF were danger zones.

I'm really happy with the way my CF darts line up, but as you may have noticed in the pics above the skirt part of CF isn't perfect - and I'm kind of tempted to go back and take it in just a smidgen to make the stripe width running down the centre of the skirt consistent with the widths to the left and right.

On CB I really wanted my invisible zip to be invisible, and my first attempt failed because I just sewed it in assuming the lines would stay straight. Second time around involved a huge amount of basting (I basted CB so I could iron some fold lines to follow, and then I basted in each side of the zip).
 

Rachel's pattern doesn't include facings (easy to draft your own or use bias tape) or instructions (well, it's pretty easy once you've sewn a few sheath dresses!).

Trickiest sewing was those triangles; they went in perfectly in my toile but were uncooperative in the stripes. I ended up doing some judicious clipping and also basting the curves in place by hand, and this did the trick.  I didn't stabilise these seams though perhaps I should have... we'll see how the dress fares over time. 

   
And the end result? 

A dress that I love.

Rachel, what a wonderful pattern! I'll be in touch with some more detailed feedback, but overall, this dress was an absolute delight to sew :)

See you soon!

- Gabrielle x