The BBQ Dress

I think you’ve seen glimpses of this dress loads of times already but I just haven’t gotten around to doing a proper post! 

You might recognise the pattern as Sewaholic’s Cambie. I’d been swooning over it for a while but I just couldn’t justify the £13 price tag at that point in time. Then came the (look away now) giveaway and I got a voucher with which I could buy the Cambie! (As well as Thurlow and Saltspring, yay!) 

I bought this fabric with the full intention of it becoming a Cambie. It’s a quilting style cotton from Fabricland and it was only £3.50 a metre. I love their cotton prints and you can never go wrong with the price. They’re good quality too- I’ve never had any issues with fading or bleeding in the wash. Now you can see why most of my projects are made with cotton!

The great thing about this dress, as demonstrated in these two photos, is that despite its bright, floral, summery nature, it can actually be worn with tights or bare legs so I’ll get year-round use out of it! 

So the dress itself- I cut a size 16 originally because the bust size matched mine, however, in my haste to get it made, I didn’t really switch on my brain and think about the fact that it’s designed for a B cup so of course everywhere else was HUGE on me!

I took a bit in on the side seams and the front darts to overcome the waist gaping, plus I usually wear it with a belt so that pulls it in a bit and you can’t really tell. The neckline was a bigger issue- it was just too wide and came out to my shoulders so my boobs were just out, constantly. Not a good look. Never mind the fact that the sleeves kept falling down and hung halfway down my arms.

To solve this I cheated a bit. I created a little tuck/pleat/fold thing at the edge of the neckline and stitched it down. It pulled the sleeves up and in and the neckline in to give me some modesty. You can’t really tell it’s there. I mean, it wouldn’t win me anything on the Sewing Bee but if anyone’s getting that close to my boobs anyway I doubt they’re looking at the stitches on my dress 😉

I mean, it doesn’t fit perfectly, but I’m happy enough to wear it and I’ve definitely learnt my lesson for next time. I’ve done a full FBA on my next version and something a little crazy with the darts. Unfortunately, I screwed up the pocket placing and instead of spending 10 minutes ripping it out I’ve put it away for a month. That’s logical, isn’t it?

Aptly named the BBQ dress because it has attended precisely 4 BBQs this year. And, as you can see, it allows me to save goals with ease.