Simplicity 1325 V-neck pinafore dress

I was wandering aimlessly around Fabricland in Bristol a month or two ago not feeling inspired by any of the fabrics. I always find that place to be a bit hit and miss, and on that particular Saturday nothing seemed to be quite right for the projects that I had in mind. So I was feeling a bit despondent, but then thankfully a random unknown stranger came to my rescue by helpfully leaving one of the pattern catalogues open on the page for Simplicity 1325.

The pinafore dress (or jumper to the Americans) on the pattern cover really caught my eye. It's a bit different to any of the dresses I've made so far, whilst keeping to my general preference for fit and flare styles. Plus I love a bit of layering when the weather gets a bit colder, so a flattering pinafore-style dress was always going to appeal to me. Especially when it was combined with a good basic t-shirt pattern, a jacket that I like the look of (and trousers too, but I probably won't be making them any time soon given my whole not wearing trousers thing) and, best of all, a half price Simplicity sale.

The dress has a flared skirt with pockets, and a lined bodice with a plunging V-neck. As you can see from the photos, this is definitely a pinafore and would be a bit indecent if you didn't have the t-shirt underneath! I'm wearing it with a basic RTW t-shirt here, but I'm planning to try out the t-shirt that comes in the pattern at some point soon.

I made a size 14, with the only alteration being to add 1 inch to the length of the bodice, which is a standard alteration for me. I was a bit worried before making the dress that the deep V neck might make fitting a bit of a pain, but I got lucky and it fit me really nicely straight out of the packet. I think the photos don't entirely do it justice on that front, as they seem to show up every possible tiny little crease which doesn't seem to be there in real life, but I promise it does fit nicely really!

Sewing up the dress was pretty straightforward. The instructions were all nice and clear and fairly well illustrated. I was already familiar with almost all of the techniques, but I sewed my first lapped zip (I'm pretty confident with centered zips, and growing to love invisible zips after a bit of a wobbly start, but I'd somehow unintentionally avoided lapped zips until now!), and that went relatively well. There's room for improvement there, but I'm happy with it for a first attempt.

If you've followed my blog for a little while, you may have noticed that the fabric I used is a different colourway (indigo) of the same chambray that I used for my latest Mortmain dress. I still think it doesn't photograph brilliantly as a finished garment, but really is beautiful fabric - in terms of both how it looks and feels. Here it is in all it's glory when it arrived...

I love how fabric comes tied up with pretty ribbon from Dragonfly Fabrics - it makes it feel like Christmas has come early!

The only thing I might change about this dress would be to think about leaving out the pockets. This is odd for me because I generally prefer dresses/skirts with pockets, but in this case the combination of the skirt being cut on the bias and the chambray I used means that I have to be really careful about keeping the pockets completely smooth under the skirt, otherwise they don't sit particularly nicely and aren't very flattering for my hips. This means I probably won't really be using these pockets, so they might as well not be there really!

That's a fairly minor point though, and other than that I'm pretty pleased with this dress. I'm not sure I'll make another one again instantly, not because I don't like this one but because, compared to most of my other dresses, it's quite a distinctive shape so I think even if you made it in a totally different fabric it would quite obviously be the same dress (if that makes any sense?!), and it's always good to have a bit of variety, don't you think?

Mortmain dress & an ode to chambray

I mentioned in my post about my denim Lilou that using the remains of my first Mortmain dress for the lining had reminded me that I should make another version of this pattern. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to be honest as I really like my first version and I had definite plans for making a sleeveless version this summer but they never quite became reality, but I've now got a second sleeved version at least - better late than never!

There are a couple of differences between this version and my first one. Firstly, I decided to reverse the pleats in the skirt - this is one of the suggestions included in the pattern instructions and there's also a really helpful tutorial on the Gather website if you're not familiar with sewing pleats. I'm pleased that I reversed the pleats on this one, in some ways it's a small change but I think it makes a surprisingly big difference to how the dress looks and, much though I like Mortmain no. 1, I think I prefer the pleats in this one.

I also used a regular centred zip this time instead of using an exposed zip as the pattern suggests. I quite like the exposed zip on my first version because it's a bit of a contrast with the extreme girliness of the rest of the dress, but as a general rule I'm not a massive fan of exposed zips. Plus, in places where I've seen them for sale anyway, they cost about five times as much as regular zips!

My first version uses ribbon ties on the sleeves, and I really do love this feature, but it's not massively practical for wearing under cardigans, so this time I used buttons on the sleeve cuffs instead. The pattern has instructions for adding a small elastic loop to one end of the cuff to secure the button, but I found that I had enough space in the cuff to sew in a buttonhole, and I thought that would be more secure, so that's what I did.

OK, so the material. It's a gorgeous dot chambray by Robert Kaufmann that I got from Dragonfly Fabrics and I LOVE it. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, if I had any poetic talent I might even be inclined to start writing sonnets about it, that's how much I love it. The only thing I don't love about it is that it seems to be some kind of shy wallflower and doesn't want to show off how lovely it is to you because it doesn't photograph brilliantly so you might not appreciate it in all its glory, but trust me that the glory is there. I do love spots and dots, so that definitely helps, but aside from that the colour is gorgeous, it was lovely to sew and it feels so nice to wear. I'm seriously tempted to get some of the indigo for another dress. And as a bonus, the material came so beautifully wrapped that it felt like Christmas had come early!

Sorry if I sound like I'm going a bit over the top there, I possibly may be getting a bit carried away with myself, but it really is lovely fabric. I've also become aware recently that the difference between me just liking a finished garment or really loving it tends to be the fabric that I've used, and not so much the obvious aspects like the colour or the print, but the the quality of the fabric, the way it sews up and how it feels to wear. Does anyone else find that? It's not a particularly earth-shattering realisation, and probably one that that I have been a bit slow to arrive at, but I'm glad I got there all the same.

On a not-particularly-related subject, the photos for this post were taken in the grounds of the American Museum in Bath. My Mum and I popped over there last Saturday mainly because they have a Kaffe Fassett exhibition on at the moment, which was so inspiring. It's on until 2 November, so if you're in the area and you're a fan of colour I'd definitely recommend it. The only problem was that I came away from it wanting to buy huge amounts of rainbow-coloured material and yarn to make massive quilts and blankets to brighten up my flat (which is rented, therefore entirely painted in magnolia). I'd always been intimidated about quilting, and not really sure if I wanted to give it a go, but after seeing some of his work, I definitely feel like I should try it some time. I'm still slightly intimidated by the idea though! Any tips on how to get started?

Even once the Kaffe Fassett exhibition is over, the museum would still be worth a visit if you're interested in quilting at all, because they have a lovely collection of quilts and textiles. Plus, as you can see from these photos, the grounds are beautiful. Although I don't think there'll always be yarn-bombed lampposts to greet you, I think they're in honour of the exhibition!

To cut a long story short, I love this dress and I had a great day wearing it for its first outing. I still really like the idea of a colour-blocked Mortmain, so number 3 may be appearing at some point this autumn/winter. And there will probably have to be some more dot chambray in my life - it's OK to use the same fabric multiple times, isn't it?!

Collarless Bluegingerdoll Winifred Dress

A little while ago I was lucky enough to win a giveaway hosted by the lovely Liz of Sewn By Elizabeth and Indie Stitches for a Bluegingerdoll pattern. I chose the Winifred dress and, after a slight bit of pattern hacking, here's my version...

As Bluegingerdoll patterns are designed to fit a D cup, which I'm not, I thought I'd have to make some fit adjustments to the bodice - to be honest this was probably why I hadn't already bought the Winifred (or the Billie Jean - so pretty!) for myself! In the end though, this turned out not to be much of a problem and the fitting was straightforward. From comparing the paper pattern to my measurements, I knew I needed to add length to the bodice so I started out by making my standard addition of 1 inch, and then made a muslin to check what other changes might be needed.

That showed me that I needed to add another inch again, and that I'd added the length in the wrong place - I'd added it above the tuck dart as suggested in the Winifred sewalong (which includes lots of tips and tricks if you're thinking of making your own Winifred), but that made the dart too low and left me with excess fabric under the bust. So, for muslin no. 2, I removed the inch I originally added, and instead added 2 inches in the middle of the dart. Problem solved!

At this point, the shape was really nice once I had the dress on, but it was ever-so-slightly on the tight side and a bit of wiggling was needed to get the dress on and off. I was fairly sure that going up a size would make it too big though, so I decided to sew the dress with a 1/2 inch seam allowance instead of the usual 5/8 inch. Probably not technically the right approach to take, but it worked fine and now the dress fits nicely without any need for wiggling.

Fitting aside, those of you who are familiar with the Winifred pattern will probably have noticed the big change that I made - mine's collarless. When I was making my muslins I decided that, lovely though the collar looks on other people, it didn't entirely suit me so I wanted to make it collarless instead. Luckily for me, Heather had already done the hard work for me and written a fantastic tutorial about how to make a collarless version of the Winifred dress on the Bluegingerdoll blog. It worked a treat, and I'm really glad I made the decision to go collarless.

Once I'd got through making all my adjustments, Winifred came together really quickly as there are no zips or buttons to worry about. The shaping is provided by the two tuck darts on the front, which act kind of like pleats, and an elasticated waistline at the back. The back is also meant to have a fabric belt which covers the elasticated section, but my hacking came into play again at this point. I had actually added the belt, but when I tried the dress on to work out where I needed to secure the belt buckle, I decided to take it off so that I had the option of wearing the dress with other belts.

I really like the shape of the front, but I feel like it's slightly less flattering on me from the back. On the plus side though, the elasticated back waist means that it's really comfy to wear whilst still looking nice, which makes it great for when I'm working - I work from home so being comfy is more of a priority than looking smart, but I still like to be presentable. This definitely fits that bill!

The fabric I used for this is a floral chambray that I got on ebay. I like the look of it up close, but the floral pattern kind of disappears at a distance so the fabric ends up looking pretty plain. This was actually the look I was going for because I wanted something that would be easy to wear with anything on a daily basis, but I think the colour can end up looking a bit dull on me (in some lights it's lovely, in others it ends up looking a bit more drab grey than pretty blue) - one of the reasons why I wanted to be able to wear a belt with the dress to brighten it up a bit. 

All in all, this isn't my favourite dress that I've made, but then not every dress can be your favourite dress can it? That's not to say that I don't like it, I definitely do and it's so easy to wear that it definitely won't be getting left unloved at the back of my wardrobe. Some days you just need a fairly plain dress that you can pull on and be good to go without having to worry about what you're going to wear with it - this definitely fits that bill, so it's a winner in my book!