Two Lilou Dresses for the Price of One!

The glorious warm weather we were enjoying a couple of weeks ago may have been replaced with unpredictableness and dramatic rain showers lately, but today I'm going to try to tempt the sun to come back on a slightly more reliable basis by showing you another pretty sundress (you can't have too many of them, right?!). I mentioned in my post about my first Lilou dress that version 2 was already cut out, well now it's all sewn up and here it is!

Excuse the slightly wrinkled look here! I'd already been wearing it for most of a day at this point, but then came across a practically deserted little park which seemed like a good place to use as a background for some photos - I'm not the greatest person at posing for photos so the smaller the audience I have the better, but pretty places with not many people in them are few and far between.

I'm sticking by the glowing praise I gave this pattern, and Love At First Stitch in general, in my post on my first Lilou. It's a really lovely dress, and feels great to wear. While in this version it's the perfect dress for a summer day, it could work for lots of different occasions depending on what material you use and how you accessorise it. Without wanting to wish summer away, I have already been hatching plans for a version that I could wear on into the autumn and winter. 

For this version, I used the same adjustments as in my first one - size 6 at the bust, grading down to a 5 at the waist and back out to a 6 at the hips, and with 1.5 inches added to the length of the bodice and 2.5 inches added to the skirt. As I said before, I do have a little bit of extra space in the bodice, but it's only a teeny bit and I'm totally happy with the fit. Plus, you know, it's always good to have some space to breath!

The main fabric is a pretty berry print cotton poplin that I got from Abakhan. They have it listed in their craft section rather than dressmaking, but I think it works fine for the Lilou dress. It has less drape than the cotton sateen I used for my first version, which gives the skirt a little bit more body. I really like the colours in the print - I've always thought that yellow is such a happy colour but it just doesn't really suit my colouring (trust me, I tried it in my teenage technicolour phase!), but the small amounts of it in this print combined with blues, reds and pinks are perfect for the summer.

I'm a big fan of the contrast lining in my first version, so I thought I'd do the same for this dress. Plus, it's a great way to use up bits of the stash that aren't big enough for a whole garment. Or that are too see-through to be used on their own as is the case here! This one is a cute white and blue heart print, I suspect polycotton, that has been hanging around on my shelves for a while so I'm glad it's now been put to good use.

And here's the third Lilou that I've made! This one's for my Mum though. She really liked my first version so asked me to make her one as well. Thankfully we're pretty much the same size so I could just use the same pattern pieces as for my own version and didn't need to worry about fitting.

The cotton that I used here is from John Lewis (I think it's part of their 150 year anniversary collection). At £18 per metre, it's definitely on the pricey side for a cotton but it's great quality and was really nice to sew. I'm also assured that it's lovely to wear! I lined this one in some of the voile I had left over from lining my Cambie dress. 

It was really nice to do some unselfish sewing for a change, and I'm please with the final result - particularly the pattern matching that I managed to pull off down the centre front! My mum really likes it too, which is the main thing.

So yes, Lilou is a great dress - I'd definitely recommend it! 

According to my vague sewing plan, this was meant to be my last "summer" dress this year, but then at the weekend the new issue of Love Sewing magazine arrived, which comes with a pattern for a particularly pretty looking dress - I think it should be out in shops today so keep an eye out if you're a fan of fit and flare dresses! Surely leaving the pattern unloved on the shelf without trying it out would just be rude wouldn't it? So, in spite the questionable weather we've been "enjoying" this week, there will probably be another pretty summer dress on these pages in the not too distant future! And for now, I'll leave you with a twirling shot! See you soon!

Love At First Stitch Clémence Skirt

There's been a lot of love in the online sewing community recently for Tilly's new book Love At First Stitch, and rightly so - it's gorgeous! The book itself is wonderfully colourful and inspiring, and I can honestly say that I can see myself making all of the patterns, which is rare as in most books there's usually at least one pattern that I know that I'll never make. Anyway, I started off with the Clémence skirt...

(Excuse the slightly crumpled waistband in most of these pics, I'd been happily wearing the skirt for a whole day by the time they were taken)

This is one of the two projects in the book that include instructions for drafting your own pattern instead of tracing off the paper patterns included with the book. As it's a dirndl skirt so only the waistband really needs to fit, this is a simple process, and even simpler with Tilly's instructions to help you along. Each new technique (for this skirt drafting the pattern, French seams, gathering and stitch in the ditch) is explained in detail as you get to it, but presented on a different background to the instructions for the project itself so it's easy to skip sections for techniques you're familiar with, or to refer back to techniques from previous projects (invisible zips in my case, I should know what I'm doing with them by now but I'll always welcome extra tips - and this one turned out well!). 

The instructions are really clear and easy to follow, and are just the right level of chatty to make you feel like there's a real person helping you out, without being overly-friendly and annoying if that makes sense?! 

I drew out the pattern pieces in my lunch break (one of the benefits of working from home!) and sewed the whole skirt up that evening, which included hand sewing the hem (which I did mainly because I couldn't decide what colour would work best for topstitching!), so a nice quick sewing project, and definitely beginner-friendly.

The fabric I used for this is a lovely seersucker-type cotton, which is quite lightweight and therefore on the floaty side, but perfect for a summer skirt. Even if the weather this weekend wasn't quite summery enough for me to ditch the leggings, hopefully it will be soon!

The material has been in my stash for quite a while now (I got it at the same time that I bought the material I used for my Sureau dress, and weirdly like that dress, this skirt also had its first outing on a trip to Lyme Regis. I don't go there that often honestly, although I do love it there!). It had been sitting there neglected because, although I love all the colours in the material, I had come to the realisation that they don't all love me. There's a yellowy green in there that would look lovely on some people but just makes me look ill. So that scuppered my original plan of turning it into a dress, but I think it works fine as a skirt as I can wear a top in a colour that does suit me as a barrier between the yellowy green and my face! And having lots of colours in the material means that it'll go with lots of different tops. 

(and here's what the waistband looks like when it's nicely ironed!)

I cut the waistband on the bias partly because I like the way that checks look when cut on the bias, and partly to avoid giving myself a headache about whether I should try to do any kind of pattern matching between the waistband and the gathered skirt. To avoid stretching it too much, I applied the interfacing to the material first and then cut the front waistband piece from that, which seemed to work well. 

I did a bit of pattern matching down the side seams and centre back seam, but I didn't stress too much about it. I basically made sure that the horizontal lines all matched up, and that I wasn't going to end up with a massively obvious double line of one of the vertical colours down one seam. I think because the skirt is gathered and quite floaty I can get away with that level of pattern matching here (and it also meant that I've got enough of the material left that I'll probably be able to squeeze a pair of summery pyjama trousers out of it - always good!). 

I'm really pleased with how this one turned out and, thanks to Tilly's "Make it your own" tips on variations in the book, and some pretty chambray that I spotted the other day, I'm already plotting future versions. Although I might have to give some of the other patterns in the book a try first - the Lilou dress in particular will definitely have to be sewn soon!