The English Garden Dress

This B5488 dress was finished over a week ago. My biggest problem was getting a photo. Despite our crazy Florida weather, I was determined to "model" it outside in the garden. When there was sunshine, the heat (index 109F) and huminity was so high that my camera screen fogged. Late in the day, there was lightning and/or rain. The possible days were windy. I thought that I had chosen a perfect day. Then, the wind decided to appear at an inappropriate time (for me). The dress tends to ballon with the wind. Maybe, I need to rename this the "billowing dress". Please keep this in mind. I look heavier in picture than I am (ugh!!) and the hem really is even. If you look closely, there is a flower stalk in the lower left corner of the picture. I managed to cut off the other flowers. The butterfly even flew away from the camera! That's enough whining!

Here's a picture on Dolly, without the wind. I think it shows the actual fit of the dress better.

This dress is super easy to sew. It only took an afternoon even with a couple of problems that I experienced.The pleats might cause a bit of a challenge for new sewers, but they are clearly marked on the pattern pieces. I did have a problem with the yoke in this fabric. I changed (means ripped out) the yoke in the same fabric. It didn't look right, looked sloppy, and reminded me of a mumu (a real danger with this pattern if anyone is not into mumus). I was able to find a matching fabric in my stash. Note: A large fabric stash can help with emergencies. Once the yoke was sewed, it looked so lonely that I added a band to the sleeves. BTW, I added about 3 inches to the sleeves. The yoke and band looked just added on (which they were). So, I added topstitching in the darker blue. That helped a lot. The picture of the yoke is blurry but it does show the topstitching. The picture of the sleeve band is clearer.

In the muslin, I made my usual size 12 for the top and tapered out to size 14 for the hips. This pattern has A LOT of ease. I ended up making a straight size 12 for the final dress. The extra ease made a great nightgown!

During the month of May, I actually made 2 nightgowns. Despite the ugly fabric of this one, I love both of them. There will not be any more oversized t-shirts at night!

I do like this dress although I won't say I love it. I won't make it again although I may shorten it and make a top. It's just so hot that I like a looser fitting top in the summer. As for dresses, I definitely will go for more fitted in the future.

I've finished a skirt that I love. This post is long enough for now so I'll post about it later this week.

The English Garden Dress

I love delfiniums. Aren't they pretty? I don't remember seeing these flowers when I was in England, but they look like they belong in an English Garden. Certainly, they typically don't grow in Florida. We grew these from seeds. I guess they adjusted to our crazy weather. We even have some more coming. I hope they make it before the Florida sun scares them away.
This is the fabric that I first saw on Shannon's blog:

When I saw it, I went to the Fabric Mart Site as fast as my fingers could type. It reminded me of the delfiniums. They still had some of the fabric left. (Of course, several other fabrics jumped in my cart to keep it company on the ride to my house.) For some reason, I can't seem to get Fabric Mart e-mails despite multiple requests. I seem to do all right, though, with blog reading and fabric browsing!

I spent a lot of time deciding what pattern to use for this fabric and looked at numerous dress patterns. Finally, I narrowed it down to two. My English Garden Fabric decided it wanted this one (B5488):

Maybe, it was the dress on the model who was wearing a similar fabric. Another fabric started screaming that it wanted to be the other dress pattern. Yes, my fabric makes a lot of noise. Usually, I'm wise to listen to the fabric. I'm not so sure this time. The pattern is an easy one that should have gone together quickly. There weren't any major sewing problems. I'm just not sure that I like it so I kept dragging my feet on finishing it. Finally, I hemmed it today. It's on my ironing board ready for the final press. I'll take pictures when the iron finishes (It's slow sometimes.). Then, I'll decide what to do about it. I definitely love this fabric and really want a dress that I love, too. There may be a remake in my future. It's NOT going in the trash.