I have two weeks off work over Christmas and New Years, and I plan on spending as much of that time as possible sewing. This dress is the first (successful) outcome of that plan; I cut it out and stitched most of it together on Monday, and hemmed it and finished some hand stitching yesterday, in time to wear for Christmas.
The fabric is very special; it is a piece of stretch sateen that I went halvies on with Roisin (AKA Dolly Clackett) when in London earlier in the year. You see, we spied this fabric but the shop was bizarrely only selling it in 5m pieces, and 5m is an awful lot of fabric, even when it is as lovely as this. HOWEVER, 2.5m is a pretty perfect amount of fabric, and so Roisin and I shared the piece.
She already made an absolutely gorgeous gorgeous dress out of her fabric aaaaaages ago. Seriously, click on that link and check out her dress; stunning! I'm glad I didn't remind myself of what hers looked like before I made mine as I would have been intimidated as to how sophisticated and gorgeous her dress is and not wanted to make my own as it pales in comparison!
The pattern is another belladone, this time not reflective and as such has slightly less binding on it than the reflective version; just around the back cut-out, the neckline and arm holes. The binding however is really lovely, it's a pre-made satin binding that looks just lovely with the sateen. I did the binding nice and narrow too, so that it mirrors the width of the outlines of the flowers in the print.
I made no other alterations from my previous version, but have identified an alteration I will make to the skirt next time I use the pattern, as I get some minor drag lines over my bum as it is, but I think I know how to fix that so watch this space.
