Well G’day Shelias’ and… Bruces?!
How are you all?
I’m quite excited because I had my first sale at work which is going to mean nothing to anyone but they are hard to get and I’m happy and relieved to get one!!
Also, much more appropriately (for this blog) I’ve managed to squeeze in some sewing time! Yay!
So here I am today with my latest make and I have 2 more to show you soon too! 🙂
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking the drapey knit dress is the best thing in the new The Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion with Fabric
I practically live in black and white stripes so the fact this is the first thing I am making in it is ludicrous but it won’t be anything like the last because I blooming love them! I actually made a good few mistakes with this dress- I managed to cut out the fabric with stripes the wrong way round on the back and changed the skirt to go across so I didn’t have to do crazy pattern matching (which I am A)bad at and B)a bit lazy to bother doing!) So yup, I decided at the beginning that no pattern matching was going to happen here and randomly have a bits of it matching up completely by accident! Do you bother with pattern matching? Should I stop being lazy about these things?!!
It’s definitely a bit of a puzzle… check out the pieces!
I sewed up all the seams on my overlocker which I love using for knits but the topstitching on the sewing machine is a nightmare with this fabric- it kept rolling over and reshaping and none of my lines are straight! After some internet research I have ordered a walking foot for my Janome and hope this will help in the future- I also intend to go back over the hems and neckline as quite frankly they are a mess!!
Also I completely messed up somewhere because my pleat turned out to be the opposite side to everyone else in the pictures I have seen – this is no biggie for me but it doesn’t sit quite right…
Even after all that though I do love my dress and wore it straight to work after finishing it with some lovely comments so it will be a wardrobe favourite I am sure! It’s properly comfy and I love it even more with a thick belt…
FABRIC : Black & White Striped Ponte Roma from a stall (whose name I have forgotten) at the Knitting & Stitching Show which was £8 for 2.5m
PATTERN : The Draped Stripy Knit Dress from The Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion with Fabric book
TIME TAKEN : About 5 hours (a lot of head scratching took time!)
COMMENTS/ IDEAS FOR NEXT TIME : Oh so many but I am eager to try again with a walking foot!
So that’s about it… I will leave you with another (completely not needed) picture of me in this dress – this time in the kitchen excited about Spring finally coming to London!! Yaaay!
Lots of love spring chickens!
Wow! Love this so much! Nice work Gabby, suits you to a tee 🙂 xox
Thankyou!! 🙂
Oh wow, this is amazing! I just love how the stripes work with this pattern. I just bought this book yesterday, and have to agree that the knit dress is the most exciting pattern in there. Sadly I don’t have enough knit in my stash to make one (boo) so am cutting out for a t-shirt at the moment.
And I’m totally a lazy pattern matcher too – precision is totes overrated :). xx
I totes agree!!! 🙂 Good luck with the book – there’s so much great stuff in there – I just whipped up the casual trousers hack in a couple of hours too! So comfy!! Xox
Could the fabric have been from Simply Fabrics in Brixton? I bought quite a lot of fabric from that stall at the show. I wish I’d seen those stripes.
My favourite dress from the book too.