Nina Lee Kew Dress: Sewing Pattern Review

It's been a busy couple of weeks around these parts and blogging has fallen slightly by the wayside. I've still been finding time for sewing though so I'm developing a little backlog of projects to talk about. Most of them are still waiting to be photographed, so I've just got one to share today. It is a good one though, so I hope you won't be too disappointed! Here's my Nina Lee Kew dress...

The Kew dress is a pattern that's been in my stash waiting to be made for a while, but for some reason it kept getting neglected and not quite making it to my sewing table. When Nina Lee released the expansion pack for the pattern recently, the gathered skirt option really appealed to me and gave me the push that I needed to finally sew up the pattern.

For this first one, I combined the gathered skirt from the expansion pack with version one of the bodice from the original Kew pattern. This bodice has a touch of the 1940s tea dress about it with the front bodice gathered into a yoke at the shoulders and ruched sleeves (more on those later!).

The instructions for the pattern are really detailed and easy to follow. There's nothing too tricky about sewing the Kew dress, and if you're a little uncertain about anything then I'm sure the instructions would explain everything. The pattern is recommended for confident beginners, and I'd say that's an appropriate rating, and it's a nice straightforward-but-not-boring project if you have a bit more sewing experience.

In terms of sizing, my measurements put me between a 12 and 14 at the bust and between a 14 and 16 at the waist and hips. I looked at the finished garment measurements and decided to make a toile in a 14 at the bust blending out to a 16 at the waist. For button-up dresses, I prefer to have just a little more ease so that the dress is nicely fitted but without the danger of having inter-button gaping issues.

While I was making the toile I decided to test out the sleeves as I was a bit concerned that they might be awkward to wear under cardigans. On my toile, I added the ruching on one sleeve and left the other one plain. My suspicions proved to be correct and, while I think the ruching is really pretty, that sleeve did seem a bit bulky under a cardi and I also found that the ruching restricted my arm movement a bit. That made it easy to decide to just leave the sleeves plain.

The only other alteration that I made to the pattern was to lengthen the bodice by 2 inches. Lengthening a bodice is standard for me, but 2 inches is a bit more than I'd usually have to add.

The fabric that I used for this one is a spotty chambray from Minerva Crafts - I can't see it on their website at the moment, but they do have lots of other chambray options. It was a lovely fabric to work with - as it's a cotton it behaves nicely, but it has enough drape to handle the gathers on the bodice and the skirt of this dress.

As blue and white spots are pretty much a neutral in my book, I decided to use this dress as the opportunity to try out something I've been wanting to do for a while - rainbow buttons! I got these from ebay (again the ones I bought don't seem to be available, sorry!). I love how the buttons look - I think they're the perfect finishing touch for this dress.

All in all, I'm really glad that I finally got around to making a Kew dress. This one is the perfect everyday dress for me, and the combination of the blue and white spots and rainbow buttons will make it very wearable I think. I'm planning to make the strappy bodice of the Kew dress as a pinafore at some point, and I'd like to try out the other skirt options some time too. Have you made a Kew dress? What options did you use?