I'm Here for the Garden Party - By Hand London Flora Dress

*I got an engraved note in the mail the other day.... "We cordially invite you to our fence garden party on the first of April. Please RSVP if you're bringing cookies."  Let it never be said that "All the patterns" Heather would turn down a cookie party.  I made sure to bake up a fresh batch of cookies and got myself all dolled up in my new party dress, Flora.  Well I must have gotten there early because there was no garden party or cookies, just the fence.  At least the fence and I are old buddies. After catching up we decided to take a few pictures to commemorate the event.

The age old story of a girl and her fence

Where the hell are those cookies?

Right about this time I started suspecting some foul play about the cookie party.  Wait a minute, isn't it April fools?  Hey where is my plate of cookies?!  I ran back to the house to find frog face down in what was left of the pile. To say I was displeased would be putting it mildly.  After a thorough scolding I put him to work paying off his cookie debts sewing hems.  I'm currently monitoring him drinking a glass of wine and smoking cigarettes Betty Draper style. Still working on my Nordic bitch stare.

Speaking of Betty, I'm pretty sure she would kill for this dress.  OK fine, she's made some snotty comment about being a size 6, but secretly she'd want it. And who wouldn't, it's full of girly awesomeness.

I know some of you saying, "Wait a minute, that dress is supposed to be a blue and white floral. Not a black and teal flora. What the what what?" Well ladies, that lovey pique turned out to be about 4" too narrow and a yard too short.  Guess I should have checked the yardage requirements before writing up my ridiculous dress list post.  The circle skirt needs the entire 60" of fabric to get the full sweep and it eats up yardage like crazy.  Luckily for everyone I have lots of wide flora prints in the stash.......lots.

But let's get into an actual pattern review. Remember those?

Pattern
By Hand London's Flora Dress  I sewed a size 10 with the faux wrap bodice and the skirt with the straight hemline.

Fabrics used
Ascher Studio dress weight cotton.  I really like the vintagy large scale prints Ascher Studio makes and have several of their fabrics in my stash.  This one I bought at my semi-local store, Steve's Sewing.

The lining is black siri which I picked up from Gertie's store last summer.

Pattern changes/alterations
1. Usual 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment.
2. For my low set bust I dropped side seam dart 1 1/2" and shortened waist dart by 1".
3. Took in the side seams under the arm only about 1/4".  The pattern flares out in that area so it was very simple to cut off the excess making the side seam straight.

Note - I always have to fix gaping in wrap bodices and was prepared to make that alteration to this pattern. Imagine my surprised when trying on the Flora muslin and finding no gaping what so ever. I did cover this alteration in a previous post, so if you need it then click here to see it done in the Gertie wrap dress pattern.

Confessions/Advice
1. The waist darts might be a little too far over towards the side seams.  This wasn't that noticeable in the faux wrap bodice, so I did not change their location.

2. On the faux wrap bodice the zipper is not supposed to be encased in the lining.  The overlap of the two pieces keeps you from turning the SA under in the waist area. Because of this you're supposed to finish the CB layers together and sew the zipper on top of the lining.  Well that exposed zipper irked me, so I did some unauthorized sewing to get around it.  The lining and self layers were sewn together up to 1 1/2" of the CB where I stopped and back stitched.  Then I folded the lining back and continued attaching the skirt to the bodice with only the self layers.  This isn't good sewing practice, so I wouldn't recommend it.  But I got to encase my zipper tape and be happy.

3. Those of us with low set bust fullness will find that there is plenty of coverage in the wrap bodice. At least that's my theory for why the pattern mock up shows so much cleavage and mine has none.  I actually prefer the non revealing neckline because keeping my boobs inside wrap bodices is usually a problem. Much like water, they always seek the lowest point.

Husband Comment
"You're all dolled up in a summer dress.  It's pretty but aren't you cold?  Well I guess you'll be ready for summer."

Bonus son comment - "You think you like ballet? Spin, SPIN!" *Giggles as I spin and skirt twirls out* "AGAIN!!!!!"  I had to run away because he made me spin until I almost fell down and had some "regurgitation issues."

My Final Thoughts
This is the first By Hand London pattern that I was crazy about from the start.  The others were more of a slow burn/be swayed by other people's FO's deal.  I think a full skirt without any gathering is really what sold me.  Full Skirt + Wrap bodice = Girly prettiness which summer Heather enjoys.  I'd make another in a heartbeat.  Now if I can only wrangle an invitation to a real garden party. The fence is my plus 1.

P.S. - It's the day to announce the Spring Clean Swap pattern bundle winner.  Grace Cunningham, you will be getting the bundle of patterns and thank you for taking them off my hands.  I'll be emailing you for an address in a bit.  For everyone else, I still have plans to do a thorough weeding out of the pattern stash. Those will go up in the Stash diet group and I'll give everyone a heads up when that happens.  Thanks everyone!


*Crazy made up story. Except the part where frog concocting a intricate plan to get more cookies. He would totally do that.