Double straight dress

 This post also has a Dutch version with more details about the things I did differently compared to the instructions.

This month's project for the Zo Geknipt 2 sewalong is a shirt or dress which you draw yourself so there is no pattern tracing involved. If you make the shirt version you only cut rectangles, for the dress you need some triangular pieces as well.

 I am such a person that prefers to read a small piece of text five times over reading a long text once. The book is written for people that prefer to read a long piece of text. The book describes the construction of this dress in 38 steps, I would have preferred a maximum of one third of those steps. Is there are too many steps I get bored along the way, I somehow can not focus long enough to read all the steps. I am strange like that.

Putting the whole thing together was surprisingly puzzling to me. The fact that I was trying to do this on a sewing date where I was talking too much, was not helping. The next day, after a night of sleep, the dress sewed up quickly. After I constructed the dress I of course understood the explanational steps much better. I realized that I did a few things differently, but this should not surprise you anymore. If you are really interested in all the things I did different from the instructions you should read the Dutch version of this post (due to the fact the pattern is only available in Dutch I think that some details would not be interesting for people that do not own the pattern).

The size of the dress is a 116 allover, which is a first for me. I could have cut the width in a 110 but I felt that the slightly wider bodice would not looks strange, and I was right. I made the waist with a little trick that I read at Lieveke en Zus. She also made a version of this dress by the way. I put in wide elastic in the tunnel at the waist, and made two buttonholes on the side to put in a FAKE pull string. The pull string I made from a gold colored thread which I turned onto a bigger twine. We have had this thread since I can remember, when I was a child I was already amazed by the pretty shine, but we never used it for anything. Due to my mother's latest move the thread came my way and I love that I now finally used it for something. My daughter loved the color as much as me.

Instead of buttons I used snaps. These bronze/gold colored snaps are really in my top 3 of favorite snap colors. I used a shiny yellow embroidery thread to top stitch, it almost looks like gold.

The fabric I used is Michael Miller's metalic flight which I bought at fabric.com. I only had one yard, so I had to cut some of the triangle pieces of the dress upside down. At the sewing date we spend some time looking at the fabric and decided that there was no clear up or down. After I cut the fabric I of course saw that there is, but I do not think anybody will notice on the dress.

This afternoon the sun was shining and I took the opportunity to shoot two dresses at once (the other dress is for later this week). I gave my middle daughter a small basket as a accessory and then of course my eldest wanted the same basket (although she did change the content).

I did own the book last year, so this post also qualifies for "sew your pattern stash" sewalong!

I love to hear what you think of my creations. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).