Dress from souvenir fabric

It’s not often that I find a fabric store close to me when I’m on holiday. This year, when we drove into the village where we had rented accomodation for the second week, I noted a fabric shop when we entered the village. Of course I had to pay a visit to the store, being at walking distance. It’s a shop specialised in linen fabrics, garments and home decoration (cushions, tea towels) with the name Lin ou l’Autre (nice wordplay).

Two fabrics came home with me as souvenir fabric. Note the flax thread and the cute cards they have. I particularly like the one with the picture of taking a strand of thread out to make sure it’s straight! I’ve often done that.

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Both the colour in above picture and of the finished garment below are too bright. It’s really red, but not as fire-arms red as the pictures suggest.

I made a dress from one of the fabrics I bought, which is fast in my book, only been on the shelves for about 3 weeks!

The pattern I used is Vogue 8972, view B.

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I made a muslin of the upper part because I didn’t want to take a risk with my good fabric. It has pattern pieces for different cup sizes. I used D-cup and that was fine. As always I had to lengthen the bodice, which I did at the indicated line, which was in the waistline pattern pieces. That certainly was wrong: the upper part ended too high, not covering the bust area, which made the waistline look silly. I added the extra space to the upper bodice pattern pieces and that was where it should have been in the pattern too. As you can see I add quite a bit (4 cm).

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Unfortunately the photos don’t do the pattern justice. I really love this pattern and how it looks and feels on me. I think it’s a great pattern for hourglass figures.


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The lining was sewn by machine. It was a bit of a puzzle. The instructions tell you to do quite a bit of hand sewing. More than necessary in my opinion. I know it’s not that difficult or time consuming, but I like to do it by machine if I can. In this case it’s extra complicated as you can’t leave the shoulder seams open till the last moment, which is one of the ways to do it. Not if there’s a cap sleeve of course.

It was a bit complicated and one day I might make photos and write it down properly. For now I will have to make do with some short notes I made myself too.

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