dress

Unicorn Dress

Julia 3 Comments

Quilt Market is a bi-annual sewing and quilting trade show, and I’ve been lucky enough to make dresses and other goodies for the Andover Fabrics booths for the past few markets. For spring market this year, I made a dress with the new Lizzy House double gauze.

lizzy house double gauze dress

This andover double gauze is a dream to sew with and to wear. It feels amazing, and the colors are really saturated and bright which can be hard to find on double gauze. I of course made a coordinating necklace with one of my mini embroidery hoops with one of the other critters from this line of Lizzy House fabric.

embroidery hoop necklace

The dress pattern is view C from Butterick 6582. I had two pieces of sample yardage for the dress instead of continuous yardage and with the combination of the print being super directional with a wide repeat and my inability to not fussy cut cute critters, I had a really tough time getting all the pattern pieces to fit. I ended up moving a wedge of the pattern from the front skirt piece to the back skirt piece, making each back skirt piece several inches wider, and cutting the front skirt on the fold rather than two separate pieces. This moved the side seams of the skirt and the pockets (not in the original pattern – I added my modified Emery dress pockets) towards the center front of the dress a few inches. I ended up really liking how the pocket placement turned out! I might have to try this again with some yoke pockets. I’ve made several dresses at this point, and I did not find the instructions for this dress especially easy to follow. I’m pretty sure the pattern is missing a few steps, although I was pretty easily able to figure them out. It’s also not the simplest dress pattern with the front bodice details, so I would definitely recommend the pattern to someone with some experience sewing dresses/garments or a friend to help with the pattern.

double gauze dress

A few comments on working with double gauze: this was my first double gauze project, so I used some double gauze I’d purchased on sale previously to make several muslins of just the bodice. When making big-box store pattern dresses, I always end up making a smaller size than prescribed by the envelope measurements. The double gauze has more give to it than normal quilting cotton, so because I wanted a fitted bodice I ended up making an even smaller size than usual. All that to say – if you’re making a fitted garment with double gauze, I’d really suggest you make a bodice muslin. I’d also highly recommend using an interfaced facing and interfacing for the zipper. I used Pellon ShirTailor 950F interfacing for my first muslin. It worked well, but I wanted something less stiff so ended up switching to Pellon Shape-Flex SF101 for the final dress. This dress is incredibly comfortable and flattering (if I do say so myself), and the double gauze is so worth the extra effort to get used to a new substrate if you haven’t tried it.

lizzy house dress

I used the Lizzy House unicorn tapestry print for this dress, which has lovely unicorns, as well as greyhounds, pheasants, and rabbits. The colors and florals in this print are beautiful, but I really wanted to feature the critters. The unicorn is centered on the front bodice, but the greyhounds are also featured on the back.

on

The bunny is maybe my favorite (I have a paper piecing pattern of him in my craftsy shop). While he doesn’t get any special appearances on the outside of the dress, I love that I put my dress tag right under this little guy on the inside even if no one usually sees it. I’m wearing a crinoline in the previous photos for some extra poofiness, but below you can see how it sits on its own.

Butterick 6582

Dress Specs:

Pattern: Butterick 6582
Modifications: Moved a wedge of pattern from front skirt pattern to back skirt pattern to fit on the fabric I had and cut front skirt on the fold to eliminate a seam. I also added pockets.
Size: 12.
Fabric: Lizzy House tapestry double gauze in green

Flying Geese Dress

Julia 2 Comments

Earlier this week, I pieced 20 4″x8″ flying geese quilt blocks. This would have been plenty for a good sized baby quilt, but instead, I turned them into a dress!

Flying Geese Dress

The fabric is all from Lizzy House’s newest line for Andover, The Lovely Hunt. Its full of magical woodland fauna and flora, and the colors are bright and fantastic!

Fussy Cut Dress

I’ve seen a couple pieced skirts before by and , and making one has been on my to-do list for a while. But, of course, I had to add fussy cutting.

Fussy Cut Flying Geese

Here’s a better view of the back:

Emery Dress

The dress pattern is the Emery Dress by Christine Haynes, with a handful of personal fit alterations to the bodice. This dress has become a go-to favorite for me since it is simple, flattering, and I think I’ve got the bodice tweaked just right to fit my shoulders/arms.

Quilt Block Dress

To plan for the skirt, I cut out some flying geese out of paper in different sizes, and held them up on the skirt of a previous Emery dress to see what size/placement I liked. I cut the top and bottom of the skirt straight across instead of curved, and only about 10″ long. I then added a row of 18 4″x8″ flying geese and another 3″ border to the bottom of the skirt.

Embroidery Hoop Necklace

I made a coordinating necklace with one of my 3D printed mini embroidery hoop necklaces using some little mushrooms. I think I need matching necklaces for all my dresses!

Quilt Block Emery Dress

Here’s a little video of me doing a spin so you can see all the adorable featured prints:

I love to add coordinating prints as pockets – because dresses with pockets are infinitely more practical, and I love to add cute details where I can! This dress was no exception.

Coordinating Print Pockets

This dress will be on display in the Andover booth at Quilt Market this fall – you can stop by and see it in person if you’ll be there!

Quilt Dress

Dress Specs:

Pattern: Emery Dress by Christine Haynes
Modifications: FBA 3/4″ spread, armscythe adjustment, 3/4″ length added to bodice, quilt blocks in skirt.
Size: 6, but with largest size skirt.
 Fabric: Lizzy House The Lovely Hunt – mainly Strawberry Field in Blue

 

Knit Dino Dress

Julia 3 Comments

For last quilt market, Andover Fabrics was kind enough to send me some of Lizzy House’s new fabric to make a dino dress with. You can see more about that dress here (including my awesome pattern matching across the zipper!), but today I’m sharing a new dress I made with the same print, but in a knit!

Knit Dinosaur Dress

Andover is just now coming out with some of Lizzy House’s most popular prints on knit fabric. I am crazy about the fabric they’re printing these on. Its super comfy to wear and great to sew with. Its got about 90% stretch and reasonable recovery, so it’s great for fitted garments like this dress, but would make great looser garments like T-shirts as well. For the neckline and skirt hem, I simply folded over the fabric and stitched it down with a twin needle. I left the sleeves un-hemmed though, which I quite like.

Colette Patterns Moneta Dress

The dress pattern is the Moneta Dress from Colette patterns. I cut a straight size M, and made no changes to the pattern. This is my first knit dress with pockets! The gathered waist goes on a bit differently than I’m used to – you gather it by sewing it directly on to stretched clear elastic. It ended up working well, but took a bit of practice and unpicking to get the hang of it.

Meta Dinosaurs

I wore it to New York City, where I got to hang out with some real dinosaurs [ok, fossils] at the American Museum of Natural History (which was fantastic!). The knit fabric is so much more comfortable for long travel days than my other woven dresses.

Moneta Dress

Dress Specs:
Pattern: Moneta Dress by Colette Patterns
Modifications: none!
Size: M
 Fabric: Lizzy House Hit Parade Dino Exhibit Knit in Aqua

Reversible Crepe Dress

Julia 3 Comments

My latest dress is a cute wrap dress, the Crepe Dress from Colette Patterns. This post was originally posted at Sew Sweetness as part of her Dress Up Party series – check it out for a ton of fun adult garment pattern reviews and some garment pattern giveaways!

crepe dress

You know how it seems like most patterns like dresses have names just for the sake of having a name? They need to have a name so you can talk about different patterns conveniently? Most of the time, pattern names (especially for garments) seem to have little to nothing to do with the actual pattern itself. The crepe dress, however, actually resembles a crepe in that it is a wrap dress!

Crepe Dress Back

The sleeves are a little unusually shaped on this dress, but they’re not especially difficult. Certainly not harder than normal set-in sleeves! It’s something cute and unusual about this pattern, and I have a lot more arm mobility than I usually do with normal sleeves. Gertie has a great Crepe dress sew along with videos that show all the strangest parts about the facing. If you’re not sure what the pattern pieces look like, you can see what I mean about them being unusual in this part of Gertie’s sew along. I made a bodice with the facings for a muslin, but I’m not generally a fan of facings and decided I’d take advantage of the lack of a zipper in this dress to leave out the facings and include a fun surprise…

Reversible Crepe Dress

I made it reversible! This actually wasn’t too difficult. I made two bodices (leaving the hole for the tie on different sides of each). I sewed one arm hole together, turned it wrong sides together (so as if one were a lining), and pulled the seam allowance through the other arm hole similar to the method in this tutorial, except that you can sew it all in one go. After opening it back up wrong sides together, I folded the neckline around to the bottom like a burrito and sewed the entire front and back neckline. I attached a skirt to each bodice, turned it all wrong sides together, and then sewed around the three edges of the skirts leaving a hole on one side to turn through. I left the hole in the side of the skirt that gets wrapped underneath – so the side that doesn’t have the hole to pull the armhole through. I haven’t actually finished it yet, because I might take the skirt up a couple inches, but no one can see it anyways! Voila – reversible wrap dress!

fs dresses sq

Here’s both sides of the dress. Remember how I’m an engineer? So nerdy fabrics like these are pretty much my favorite, and I was excited to get to work 4 of them into this one dress! The all black side has all kinds of math, physics, and chemistry equations and diagrams. The black and white side is the same atom fabric in two different colorways, and the tie belt is a bunch of elements from the periodic table.

Crepe Dress Sleeve

Overall, the dress was an easy one to make. The sleeves were intimidating, but not difficult. Setting in normal sleeves is usually my least favorite part of dress making, and I would take these sleeves over normal ones any day. They were harder to cut than to sew! The lack of a zipper to install was refreshing, even though I tend to actually enjoy that step. Plus as a wrap dress, if I eat too much food I can just loosen the waist tie! And if I spill something, I can just turn the dress inside out 🙂 I think the shape is flattering, especially the V in the back. I was a little worried about coverage since the back is technically open. Both back panels cover the whole width of the skirt, though, and I’ve worn it around for a full day in wind without any concerns. Will definitely be making more of these, probably mostly double-sided!

Crepe dress back tie

As far as pattern specifics, I originally cut a size 6, but after making a muslin I changed to a size 4 with a FBA (spread 1/2″). I made no other adjustments, which is actually a bit unusual for me at this point. The fit is really forgiving because of the wrap nature of the dress, though. I cut version 1 (but made it reversible), but there is also a version 2 which has a really cute sweetheart neckline. I also omitted the pockets from the side with the white skirt because I was worried about them showing through the fabric.

crepe dress atoms

 

Dress Specs:
Pattern: Crepe Dress by Colette Patterns
Modifications: FBA adjustment with 1/2″ spread, made reversible!
Size: 4
 Fabric: Equations and Periodic Table from Science Fair by Robert Kaufman, and an atom print by Sue Marsh for RJR fabrics.

Dino Dress

Julia 14 Comments

If you’ve talked to me about fabric, you probably know that Lizzy House is my all time favorite fabric designer. If you talked to me much as a child, you might know that I’m pretty crazy about dinosaurs. So when I found out a few months back that Lizzy House was designing dinosaur fabric, it was a really good day. When I got some advance yardage in the mail from Andover fabrics, it was a better day. And now that I have an awesome dino dress, it is a pretty fantastic day!

Sleeveless Emery Dress

This fabric is part of Lizzy House’s new Natural History line, and the butterfly collar is one of Lizzy House’s butterfly prints which are now available in a range of colors. Go check it out – every single print is amazing. There are definitely more Natural History garments in my future.

Dino Dress Collar

Fussy cutting has always been one of my favorite quilty things, so I get pretty excited about having a chance to fussy cut fabric for garments. Check out those butterflies!

Zipper Fabric Matching

Another version of fussy cutting I go giddy for on garments is pattern matching. Zipper success!

About the dress itself: This is another Emery dress, but this time sleeveless and with a collar. The pattern includes a pointed collar – I just rounded out the edges because I thought it’d look better with the butterflies

Emery Dress Crinoline

I did a FBA this time, which really helped with tightness across my back. I’ve never thought of that as something I would need – but it helped a ton. I used thistutorial – it was a breeze! In addition to the FBA, I widened the darts on the upper back by about 1/2″ each and did my usual lengthening of the bodice by about 1.5″. I also make my pockets quite a bit deeper than the pattern piece (no picture, but they’re purple butterflies too!)

Emery Dress Collar

The Emery dress does not include instructions for a sleeveless version. In the past, I’ve used bias tape or hacked an unlined bodice. This time, I followed this tutorial for finishing a sleeveless, lined bodice – it was a bit finicky near the shoulder seam (I think because of the stiff collar) – but it worked beautifully!

Dinosaur Dress

Dress Specs:
Pattern: Emery Dress from Christine Haynes
Modifications: added 1.5″ length, FBA adjustment with 3/4″ spread, widened upper back darts by 1/2″ each, and left off sleeves
Size: 6
 Fabric: Lizzy House Dino Exhibit in Navy. Find it here.