Seamwork Benning Dress Sewing Pattern Review

A couple of years ago my wardrobe was mainly made up of fitted-bodice/full-skirted knee-length dresses, but these days I tend to favour looser and longer styles. The Seamwork Benning dress that I have to share with you today falls firmly into the latter category!

The Benning dress has a V-necked bodice with grown-on short sleeves and a two-tiered gathered midi-length skirt. It also, importantly, has pockets! The dress has a relaxed fit and is available in sizes from 32" to 54" bust.

Benning is rated as being a beginner level pattern and I think that's accurate. With no fastenings, no sleeves to set in and a relaxed fit, there's nothing too complicated about the pattern. 

As with all Seamwork patterns, the instructions are also very detailed so should hold your hand through the sewing process. Personally, I didn't have any problems at all and found sewing the Benning dress pretty straightforward and relaxing.

My measurements put me in a 10 at the bust, and 12 at the waist and hips and I followed that sizing for the bodice. 

I made a couple of adjustments - my standard lengthening of the bodice (in this case by 1.5") and I also lowered the bust dart by an inch. That's not an adjustment that I usually have to make, but the bust darts seemed abnormally high on this pattern and looked quite odd when I made a toile. Lowering them by an inch solved the problem. 

As I mentioned above, I blended out to a 12 at the waist for this version, but if I make the Benning dress again then I'd probably take out that extra at the waist and just use the size 10 waist as I have got quite a lot of ease at the waist in my dress.

It's not exactly an adjustment, but another slight change I made was to use the size 16 skirt pieces instead of the 10/12. The skirt on the Benning isn't that full in comparison with some other patterns (even the bottom tier of the skirt will fit on 45" wide fabric for sizes 00 to 16) so using the skirt pieces from a larger size of the dress just gave me a bit of extra fullness.

The fabric I used for this dress is a lovely double gauze that I bought from Like Sew Amazing - sadly it no longer seems to be in stock. It's a really pretty shade of blue and is beautifully soft. I think this is a really good fabric for the Benning dress - it's nice and floaty and wearing the dress feels a bit like walking about in a cloud!

I think my Benning dress turned out nicely - it was fun to sew, and it's so comfy to wear. I think it'll be really nice in hot weather - which is scheduled to be heading our way in a day or two, so I'll be able to test out my theory!