I'm back! With palm trees...

I know I probably say this ALL the time (because I am a terrible blogger), but wow - hi! it's been ages! Sorry for being such an absent blogger, but life/work/summer got in the way. 

Shortly after my last post, we had to take a trip to Glasgow to visit family, then when we got home I had 2 weeks of total work madness, then about 2 days after the work madness, my mother in law arrived to stay for a fortnight. It's all been good, but has not left me much time for any sewing! (Didn't stop me from planning lots of projects and buying both patterns and fabric though. Oops). But this weekend finally I had an entire weekend with nothing planned and even better, the weather was a bit shit, so I felt no guilt whatsoever about staying indoors sewing. YAY. 

So - to the sewing machines! 

I planned to make a Sew Over It Ultimate Shift dress. Now, I do already have the Colette Laurel, and I also have several Big 4 patterns that are suspiciously shift-dress-like, but what I like about the SewOverIt one is that it doesn't have a back zip. It's super floaty and relaxed (and thus - quick). I have no real issue with zips in terms of sewing them (although I'm lazy, so that's an issue I guess) but I find them a faff with delicate fabrics and also, actually, it's just sometimes nice to have a dress that slips on and requires no effort (zipping yourself up is SO MUCH WORK you guys). I suppose I could have converted an existing pattern to be zip-less, but we've already discussed that I'm lazy, so let's assume we know why I didn't do that. 

Having done a bit of web sleuthing of versions of this pattern, I was pretty sure I was going to need to lower the dart by about an inch. This is increasingly becoming a standard pattern adjustment for me and my apparently low-hanging boobs, but once I had the pattern traced off, the dart looked pretty low already. I did a rough tissue fit and decided I'd risk it and call this a wearable toile - and you know what? I'm so glad I did! If I'd lowered the dart by an inch, it would have been miles too low. Depending on which bra I'm wearing, this dart is either spot on, or maybe 1cm too high, but I am SO not precise enough to give a shit about 1cm. Pretty sure we can go ahead and call that a spot-on fit out of the packet. Yay! 

Sorry about these overexposed pics. It was overcast but apparently still too bright for decent photos

I cut a straight 12 based on my boob measurement, and since I was using a lovely quality, drapey crepe (which, btw, I totally love and is perfect to sew and wear. More of these fabrics please!!), I figured the waist and hips could be a bit bigger without grading (yes, ok, laziness again. So sue me). I'm happy with it. It's pretty loose without a belt, but I planned to wear it belted anyway so that works (and, in saying that, having looked at these terrible photos, I'm quite liking the unbelted look too. A wee bit tentish, but not too horrifying).

I did have a bit of a drama when I made this which provoked all manner of swearing and stamping around. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have seen my horror at this most common of overlocking incidents! ARGH. Caught the fabric when overlocking the side seams and hacked a bloody great hole in the fabric!! Thank god for a busy print which hides my sneaky patching ever-so well. If I can just avoid telling people it's there, no one will notice I think. Still peeves me, but I won't be making that mistake again I guess. Yay learning. 

Disaster.

Crisis averted with a sneaky patch. Can you see it? Look closely, but shhh don't tell anyone!

The pattern calls for a hook and eye, but my MiL brought me a tonne of buttons this visit so I sifted through and found a cute wee flower that I thought worked with the tropical fabric vibes. 

Oh, and I bound the arm holes with bias binding rather than just overlocking and turning them...that seemed a weird finish for a woven fabric. Would you guys do that with an arm hole? Am I overly suspicious? The arm hole fit is ok but I think if I had made it in a more rigid fabric (a cotton lawn perhaps), I'd need to widen it a bit. It's just bordering on too tight. Fine for this version, but I may alter future efforts.  

So that's it! Actually, I also sewed up a test version of a cardigan yesterday, but I'll blog about that another day (hopefully with a 'real' version of the same garment). For now, I leave you with my shitty photography and the hope that the sun starts shining again so I can wear my black and white tropical shift dress and frighten the world with my pasty white legs. 

Have a good week everyone! 

xoxo

p.s - I've only recently noticed that if you're reading my posts via Bloglovin', they probably look less formatted and even more shit than they do in the originals. Sorry about that. If you want to see a slightly less crappy version, come on over to the actual blog! Thanks my dearies xx