Tilly & The Buttons Indigo Dress

 Continuing on from a theme of my last post, I've made another dress that will hopefully work well across different seasons. Here's my Tilly & The Buttons Indigo dress....

The Indigo pattern has been around for a few years now, and I have to admit that when it was released it didn't initially appeal to me that much for some reason. But I kept seeing lovely versions of the pattern on Instagram and blogs, and then the add-on pack was released to offer even more options for Indigo. All of that combined meant that I decided I needed to jump on the bandwagon!

Indigo is a smock dress or top pattern with no fastenings. It has an empire waistline, floaty gathered skirt and pockets. There are options to use classic gathered seams or exposed frill seams. Between the original and add-on pack, there are a variety of sleeve options, and the add-on pack also offers a button back bodice and the possibility of making a midi dress by adding an extra tier to the skirt.

As you can probably see, I used the short sleeves and midi tier option from the add-on pack.

Sewing my Indigo dress was a breeze. The instructions are very detailed and give you plenty of help along the way. It's also a fairly simple pattern anyway, and it felt like it came together pretty quickly. Although it has to be said that all the gathering on the skirt tiers took a little while! The sewing level is rated as 'confident beginner', which I think is fair - or it makes a nice simple project if you have more experience.

In terms of sizing, I chose to make a size 5 - that's the size recommended for my bust and waist measurements. My hips are between a 5 and 6, but there's plenty of room in the hips so I just made the size 5.

I made a couple of fitting alterations. The first was very standard for me - adding 2" to the bodice length. I'm about 5'9" so I have to lengthen almost all patterns. 

When I made a toile it looked fine when I was standing still, but it was too tight across the back if I tried to move my arms so I did a broad back adjustment. I used a tutorial from Deer & Doe for making the adjustment, and added a total of 1.5" (0.75" on each side of the back bodice). That sorted the problem nicely and I can now wave my arms around as much as I want!

I also added some slim waist ties (they're hard to see in the photos, but they are there!). I've generally found that with looser fit dresses, I like the looseness in theory but in practice I think it works better for me if there's the option to add a bit of extra definition at the waistline with ties. 

The fabric I used is a star print viscose that I got from Oh Sew Crafty. I wanted a fabric that will hopefully work OK across different seasons, and star prints are one of my favourites so this was always going to appeal to me. Plus it was a bargain price so it seemed like a good option for giving this dress a try in case the style wasn't quite me.

Thankfully I needn't have worried about the Indigo dress not suiting me - I love how it turned out! It's beautifully swishy as you walk around, and the loose style means that its super comfy. I definitely think I'll wear this a lot, and I'm already on the lookout for fabric for a second version. After all, there are a lot more styles of Inidgo to try! Have you made any of the other versions of the pattern?

Floral M7948 dress

The McCalls 7948 dress that I made earlier this summer is definitely one of my favourite recent creations. It also seems to be popular with other people - I've had strangers in the street compliment me on it which is always nice! It's very distinctive (I've taken to calling it my unsubtle dress), and I think it's probably the kind of thing that you might either love or hate, but thankfully I'm very firmly in the love category.

It's lovely to wear too, so I thought that I might need to revisit the pattern. For my second M7948, I decided to use one of the other options in the pattern. I stuck with the sleeveless bodice of view C that I'd used before, but this time used the pleated skirt of views A/B instead of the tiered gathered skirt. 

I do love that gathered skirt, but I wanted the dress to look noticeably different from my first version, and the pleated skirt definitely achieves that. Plus it has the added bonus that the pleated skirt has pockets. I think the tier seam in the gathered skirt overlaps with where a pocket would sit so that option doesn't have pockets - its one downside!

I used the same adjustments as my first version - lengthened the bodice by 1.5", redrew the armholes (there isn't a separate armhole line for the sleeveless bodice in the pattern), and for this version I also lengthened the skirt by 2". I go into more details about the adjustments in my post about my first dress, which you can read here.

I added waist ties to this version too, although in this case I prefer them tied at the front rather than the back. They are there I promise, they're just getting a bit lost in the busy print of my fabric!

Talking about the fabric - isn't it lovely?! I bought it semi-locally to me at Yandles. They don't have the best website, and this fabric isn't listed online, but they do have more fabrics in store (albeit more craft cottons than dressmaking). They also somehow manage to sell most of the things in their arts and crafts shop for less than RRP, so it's worth a trip if you're near Martock in Somerset!

I really like this fabric - it's a lovely cotton, and with all those colours and flowers it was always going to appeal to me! It's also the kind of fabric that I like to sew with as the seasons change because it allows me to keep sewing pretty summer cotton dresses, but the dark background means that it'll also work well layered with cardigans and tights as the temperatures drop. Win win!

As you can probably tell, I'm really pleased with how this second M7948 turned out. Have you made this pattern before? Have you started sewing for autumn, or are you still clinging on to summer projects?!

Some recent knitting projects

It's been a while since I shared any knitting and I've recently finished a couple of projects so I thought I'd pop in to show them to you.

I'll start with the one I finished most recently and that's taken the longest time - this is a top that I knitted for myself using a pattern called "Peaceful" from a King Cole pattern booklet that was included with issue 125 of Knit Now magazine. 

It's the kind of pattern that could look a little intimidating due to the all-over lace texture, but it was actually relatively simple to knit. It's only a four row pattern, and the pattern repeats over just six stitches so I had it memorised relatively quickly. I also found that once I had the pattern established it was fairly easy to read my knitting to see what I should be doing and fix any mistakes quickly. All of that combined meant that it was a more relaxing pattern to knit than I was initially expecting it to be.

I used the yarn recommended for the pattern - King Cole Cotton Top and chose the teal colourway. It's a DK acrylic and cotton blend and was nice to knit with. I haven't worn it that much yet because it's been too warm, but it felt good to wear on the walk when we took these photos.

One thing to mention if you happen to be thinking of knitting this pattern is that I actually ran out of yarn and needed to buy an extra ball, whereas I usually always have more yarn than I need. Thankfully I was able to get a ball from the same dye lot as the rest of my yarn so it wasn't too much of an issue, but you might want to be a bit generous when buying yarn.

My second project is actually also from the same King Cole pattern booklet from Knit Now - essentially I couldn't decide which I'd rather knit when I got the booklet and the yarn for both was very affordable so the obvious choice (?!) seemed to be to knit them both!

This one is called "Time Out" in the booklet and is a sweet and simple pattern which is knit in pieces and seamed (like all of the patterns in the booklet) and is just a lot of stocking stitch with rib at the waist, sleeve cuffs and neckband. It was definitely good mindless knitting, and that combined with the colour changes in the yarn meant that it seemed to grow quite quickly as I worked on it.

For this one I again used the recommended yarn - King Cole Drifter 4-ply in the colourway Bluebell. It's an acrylic, cotton and wool blend. I would say this felt a little more plastic-y to work with than the Cotton Top did, but it knits up fairly nicely and feels fine to wear. 

I'm quite pleased that I managed to get both of these finished within the appropriate season for wearing them! I think they'll both work well with layers as well as on their own though, so hopefully I'll be able to enjoy showing them off on into the autumn as well. And now I need to get planning my next garment knitting project! Have you knitted anything recently?