Lillestoff contest output part 1: Waterfall dress

Two weeks ago Lillestoff organized a competition. Everyone was asked to send in their sewing ideas for the two fabrics: Sterntaler Kimbi and Kidsface. I wrote that I would make a waterfall woman's shirt, a skirt for my daughter and a hoodie for my son, and I won! I was over the moon, although my fabric stash is filled with Lillestoff, I didn't own these two yet and not much beats free organic fabric. When my package arrived last Wednesday I was even more ecstatic because besides the 3 meter that was announced I also received 1.5 meter matching fabrics.

The abundance of fabric made me want to sew even more than I had planned. Part of the contest rules was to post about your creations between the 18th and 31st of May. Therefore, this post if the first of a series.

Today I start with my waterfall plans. With one and a half meter I decided to make a waterfall dress. After I made a few dresses last year I somehow never made more. I love wearing them but I I gained some weight instead of loosing it and this demotivates my selfish sewing.This fabric gift finally was the last push I needed to start sewing for myself again.

I looked through all my Ottobres and found a waterfall shirt and dress in Ottobre 2/2009. My measurements didn't fall in the same size and I decided to do a full bust adjustment. Even thought knit is very forgiving when it comes to sizes, and especially Lillestoff with its great recovery, I wanted to challenge myself to be better. In the fall I did a full bust adjustment on a jersey dress with princess seams which was much more complicated than I had to do for this dress. This pattern already had darts so I only had to make them a bit wider.

The dress has a six pieced skirt, which calls for a lot of fabric if you can not use the fabric upside down. The Sterntaler has small smiling suns, I considered using them upside down but I decided against it. This meant that there was no way I could cut it out of my fabric, I really tried. But when I made the dress just above the knee it worked out fine.

I really like the shape of the dress it really hugs my body the right way, although it doesn't hide my post pregnancies belly (I think I saw my neighbour even looking at it yesterday thinking I might expect a fifth) it shows that I have curves. The darts have to be moved a bit to the middle to actually be on the place where they should, but I am still very satisfied and I think I will use this pattern again.

The nice heavy structure of Lillestoffs jersey makes the waterfall less pronounced than if I would have used a light weight drapey fabric. I finished the dress with a yellow/gold double needle top stitching.

I made pictures with a tripod (to avoid sighs from my husband when I again am not satisfied with my pose). I really needed quite some distance between me and the camera and put the tripod just behind a small wall separating our driveway from the pavement. I actually had to take a small run to reach the timer, but also increased the chance of being alone in the picture. I had a small photo bomber which was running with me and fortunately didn't reach my leg before the end of the ten shots, but she was there when I was choosing the right setting and I just love the picture

  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).