Gracious Thread's New Look Blogtour: the Petra Star Anise mash up

Today, I am part of Gracious Threads' New Look blog tour. Gracious Tour has changed the look of her website and to celebrate this fresh take, she gathered a group of bloggers who all created a "new look" with one or multiple of the Gracious Threads' patterns. Besides the inspirational eye candy, Gracious Threads is also treating you on a big sale!

First things first, my "new look". Jess encouraged us to hack (or mix) her patterns, there is not much that brings me more (sewing) joy than getting designer encouragement to play. From the start I picked the Petra pattern, a jersey shirt and dress pattern, with a circle skirt. I had several plans, I thought about turning it into a faux wrap dress or  do a patch work dress, but both ideas I have sewn already and I felt I could make it more special.

While I was writing the post for the Star Anise dress release, it just came to me. I was going to use the Star Anise skirt on the Petra bodice! Jersey patterns usually do not use pleats (this is the only pattern that I have sewn with jersey pleats). Two big pleats in a jersey dress would be new to me and a new fresh look in general.

The big advantage of the two pleats is that the skirt takes a fraction of the amount of fabric compared to a circle skirt and your print will not be turned. I feel that the pleats give this jersey dress the same sophisticated look as the original woven one. That strange area on the right of the lower picture is the pocket. Usually it is not really visible, but I did not see that the pocket piece is almost falling out in this shot.

As most of my digital print jersey, this one is again from Stoffenelf. I just fell in love with print, I had planned it for myself, but I think this relatively grown up (but romantic) print is a nice "new look" on my almost 8 year old.

I really like the puffy shoulders of the Petra pattern.

Putting the two pattern together was extremely easy. The bodice widths of the two dresses do not differ much and the small difference was easily added to the pleats. I really just reused the Start Anise skirt part, easy peasy. This sophisticated dress has a high playability factor.

Check out the other bloggers and their interpretation of the blog tours theme.
 

Nov 16 - Handmade Boy * From A Box * Inspinration * Blessed X 5

Nov 17 - Sew Starly * Sewing by Ti * Climbing the Willow * Kopy Kat Kidz

Nov 18 - Rebel and Malice * Willow and Stitch * Tales of a Tester

Nov 19 - Sew Happily Ever After* Lulu and Celeste * Sew Sophie Lynn

Nov 20 - Handcrafted by Red * Just Add Fabric * Made by Sara

Nov 21 - Create Three Point Five * Lacasa Cactus * The Wholesome Mama

As promised in the beginning, some information on that huge sale. Gracious Threads is having a 40% sale store wide during the blog tour, go and check out the store now!

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).