Creation:  Pretty Floral Dress

Fabrics Used: Evelyn & Janette Twill

The Visionary: Kelly, CutCutSew

Our Thoughts:  Kelly at CutCutSew.com made a pretty summer dress that's just right for an elegant garden party.

 

Browsing the site, I immediately gravitated towards the organic cotton sateen- there were lots of great prints and solids but I was drawn to these pretty flowers. It is super soft and drapey, and I decided it had to be an Anna Dress.

I made a quick muslin of the bodice because I haven’t sewn a By Hand London pattern before, and to my shock it fit perfect. I didn’t change a thing for this version! I didn’t even have the problem with the back gaping, as a lot of others have…I guess they made this one just for me.

This dress uses A LOT of fabric, I had two yards of this 110″ wide fabric and it was plenty, but not enough to try any real pattern matching. I think that would have been a headache I wouldn’t be willing to endure even if I had more fabric, honestly.

So, I don’t sew a whole lot of dresses, and haven’t sewn an invisible zipper in a looooong time. I looked up some tutorials and ended up following the one at Lladybird for the most part. It wasn’t too bad actually! I hand basted the part where the waistline meets up and it all matched up pretty easily.

I went with a not-quite thigh high split…it’s sort of hard to see when standing still but looks cool when I am walking, I think.  I wasn’t going to- but ended up hand stitching the split and the sleeve hems…and machine stitched the bottom hem because I was very much over the hand stitching by then.  I sewed the hem with a little 1/4″ beige ribbon, and think it looks really clean and pretty.

Here’s the hand finished split and the ribbon hem.  I finished all of the seams by serging the edges and pressing flat.

I am very happy with this project!  The fabric is dreamy, if you are looking for nice quality organic fabric there is much goodness to be found over at Organic Cotton Plus.