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.

Red Roses Dress - Elisalex/Simplicity 2444 Mash-Up

I have a wedding to attend this month and instead of wearing one of the dozen dresses made this summer I made a new one.  One might point the finger at Red October, the little #sewcialist idea to make something red in October and post it to the flickr group.  But I don't have to explain myself to you guys. I'm pretty sure you're all shaking your heads saying, "Of course you made a new dress, there was fabric and free time. You had to sew it!"

Taaa Daaaa! A pattern mash up of the Elisalex bodice and Simplicity 2444 skirt.  It's pretty and has pockets! I want to keep you pocket lovers coming back, I'm afraid you're still shaking your heads about the pocket-less Burda jacket.

Soooo anyway, it took me a long time to buy the internet sensation that is the Elisalex dress pattern for a couple of reasons. Let's just dive into them, shall we.

- The company's design aesthetic does not really match mine.
The same can be said of several other companies, so no demerits there. Everyone's taste is different and there are plenty of people out there designing with different aesthetics.  My personal style is kind of amorphous anyway, so I don't expect anyone to design specifically for it.
It's just that sometimes there's an element on a pattern that you dislike to the point that it distracts you from other features you might like. Such is the case with the Elisalex "lantern" skirt...... it's not my bag baby. Probably cause its similar to my natural shape and I have no desire emphasize my larger bottom half when I'm trying to balance it with the top.
So when I first saw this pattern I just though, "this one's for the skinny girls," and closed the tab. It took Dolly Clackett's various mash-ups of the pattern to make me give it a second look. Then I realized that the bodice portion of this design was beautiful and might be interested in purchasing it myself.

- Photos of the garments tend to be "arty" with washed out details or very busy prints.
Pattern companies have to the right to present themselves the way they want and By Hand London's photos aren't even as crazy as some of the shit Vogue puts out. Crouching in windows anyone?  In fact my opinion has always been be as crazy as you want in photos, as long as you give me a technical sketch.  Which leads us to my main problem.....

- No technical sketch for the garments before you buy.
Let be me clear that the pattern comes with a technical sketch on the inside of the sleeve. If you happen to be one of those lucky people with a brick and mortar store stocking these, then you could see it before buying.  However those of us in internet land are up shit creek, because a photo shown of this sketch is never shown.

See perfectly nice technical sketch. I could do with a back view, but this is enough information to make my brain happy.  By Hand London did tweet me a couple of months ago saying that they were going to add it to their website. This hasn't happened yet, but small companies have limited resources so I'm sure it's on a "to do" list that's a mile long. I do appreciate them taking my feedback and responding to it.

However this gives me the perfect opportunity to get up on a soap box and talk about a topic near and dear to my heart... the lowly technical sketch. I've noticed a trend across the internet concerning it lately that troubles me.  More and more it's not included as picture in the on-line buying process or omitted entirely from the pattern. Yes, a technical sketch is not sexy like photos or fancy packaging, but it is essential information that should be included in EVERY design.

I will admit that this is BIG pet peeve of mine because the technical sketch how my brain processes a design.  It allows me to see all the construction details in a format were I am not distracted by fabrication, accessories or even the model. I would also argue that no photograph can clearly show you all of the seams lines on a garment unless it is very simple one. (In this case some stylist has probably accessorized the garment to within an inch of it's life and you need the sketch anyway.)

I will take a technical sketch over fancy packaging or interesting card stock any day.  Because to me the technical sketch is not "window dressing" but an essential source of information that allows me to decide if a pattern is worth my time and effort. The only thing more important to me* then the sketch, is decent drafting of the pattern.
*List of importance should be pattern drafting, instructions, then technical sketch but my priorities are skewed cause I never read directions. How else am I gonna sing "I did it my way?" 

Soapbox rant over, now on to the good stuff

Pattern
Elisalex and Simplicity 2444, original review on the Simplicty part here.
Now for the pros, I do think that there is quality pattern drafting on the Elisalex dress.  Those of us on the upper end of the size range might find the arms too tight, but that's a common problem in grading up to the larger end. Both the front and back neckline are gorgeous and I was very pleased to find that I didn't need to move the princess line seams around to hit my bust apex.

Fabrics used
Mid weight stretch cotton purchased from Gertie's Etsy store this summer.  I had just enough bits of her siri lining laying around to line the bodice.

Pattern changes/alterations
1. I generally like patterns with minimal ease but it can bite you in the ass if you have ...ahem "full" upper arms. (I wanted to say meaty here, but that just makes me think of dinner options) Both the armhole portion of the dress and the sleeve were very snug on my muslin. My fix was to drop the armhole 1/2" and add 1/4" to each side of the sleeve underarm seam for a total of 1/2" additional width.  Since I was working with a stretch woven this seemed to be enough additional ease.

2. Normal 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment.  I also did the forward sleeve adjustment on the cap as discussed in the last blog post.

3.  My bust fullness is low set so I took in the top of the front princess line seams 3/8".

4. Also took in the middle portion of the back princess line seams 3/8" cause it's sway back city in that location.

5. I added 5/8" length to the entire bodice and then an additional 3/8" to just the CF part of the bodice.  I don't have a waist there (thanks post baby gut) so visually it looked better to have that area a tad longer.

6. I took in the bottom of the front princess line seams 1/4" to fit on the Simplicity 2444 skirt.  The two patterns were very similar in size in the waist so only a little minor tweaking was needed. Hooray!

Confessions/Advice
1. I edge-stitched the neckline and then graded and notched the seam allowance to get the curves to sit nicely.

2. I did not line the skirt portion since I didn't think it needed it and there wasn't enough siri left over anyway.  The lining is slip stitched at the waist and overlocked at the armholes.

Husband Comment
"Hey that's pretty and it has pockets. Nice."

My Final Thoughts
I really like this dress!  There was a bit of concern about this fabric being a little too thick for something that was not pants or a jacket. Thankfully the simple lines of the two patterns worked just fine with the weight. Now all I have to do is decide what pair of red heels to wear with it!