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.

 

More coral: enter Saltspring

You’ve already had a sneak peek at this with my Me-Made-May posts but I figure my first toe dip into Sewaholic patterns is worthy of a full on post!

Yep, I’ve finally joined the Sewaholic club. I bought Saltspring, Cambie and Thurlow with a voucher from none other than The Giveaway(!)

but didn’t open them for at least 2 months.

All the ideas I came up with for Saltspring were too Autumnal. I’m definitely going to make them but it seemed silly to spend Spring’s fabric budget on coppers, red and burnt oranges and then not wear it. Usually my clothes are non-seasonal, I wear the same stuff all year round, but something about orange just says Autumn to me and that’s that.

Staying pretty close to the orange theme however, coral is definitely a spring colour! And since I’ve already worked up so much other coral why not add a little more!Actually, the Miette and Saltspring were designed for each other but still- coral frenzy!

Anyway, I ‘bought’ the fabric (another giveaway prize) from Minerva- it’s a lovely tiny floral print polycotton- and immediately thought Saltspring.

Despite never having done an elastic waist or rouleau straps before I found this pretty straight forward. The in-packet directions are clearly illustrated and succinctly explained without skimming over really important parts (like adding a zip, Simplicity!)

Well I say that, I actually found that despite the trouble I took to install a zip in this dress I don’t actually need it! Still, it’s nice to know that Tasia is aware she’s designed a dress with a zip in it and thus has provided instructions for it.

For the couple of bits I wasn’t 100% sure on, and they really were minor, silly things, the sew-along/tutorial was there to hold my hand.

Next time (yes, I do have more planned already!) I’m going to do an FBA. I thought, given the blousiness, I could skip this step but it pulls a little and tries to pull the blousy bit back up which kind of  defeats the magic behind the Saltspring dress! I’ll also shorten the straps (so much flappage!)  and probably won’t bother with a zip.

Overall I’m very happy with this pattern and it inspired me to immediately get cracking on Cambie. I’m putting off the Thurlows a little as I’ve never done trousers before. I know Lauren’s sew along will hold my hand but I’m worried they won’t even resemble an article of clothing, let alone trousers!