The Helen dress

The namesake of this dress is the fantastic and beautiful Helen, aka Funkbunny, who very generously gifted me this fabric. If you hear us referring to the "Ballan Collection" we are affectionately referring to our almost matching dresses.

A motto I like to live by is "you never know unless you ask" - that if you don't tell people stuff they'll never know. Importantly, asking doesn't mean expecting, no is a perfectly acceptable answer, it just means putting it out there. This theory extends quite well into my current work, which is all about making sure your wishes are known, but it turns out it extends well into sewing too (and also chocolate).

At social sewing a while back Helen was cutting out a lovely dress from this fabric and I expressed that if she needed a home for any leftovers then I could volunteer. It turned out, she had some fabric left over after cutting out her dress, and she generously offered the left overs to me. I gratefully accepted, planning on making a fabulous pencil skirt from the stunning sateen (wow too many adjectives in that sentence, but nevermind).

    

When laying out the fabric ready to cut out the skirt, I discovered that there was quite a lot more than I realised, so made the decision to make a dress instead of a skirt. I decided to do this by simply adding a bodice to the skirt pieces I was already planning on cutting out. I did this due to a combination of being lazy and not being sure if I quite had enough fabric to eliminate the waist seam. The bodice is my standard self drafted bodice, with the neckline changed to be a boatneck.

I didn't bother lining the dress, and finished the neck and armholes with some red bias tape. Part of the reason was again laziness, but also not knowing what to line the dress and still retain the stretch in the sateen. Anyone have any great tips on that?

 

Overall I'm pretty happy with this dress. It's a nice pop of colour for me to wear to work. However I do have some reservations about it and how flattering it is. Maybe the existence of the waist seam is causing that effect, and wearing it with a thin belt (which I don't have) would solve that problem, we'll see I guess. However, I'm a cold creature and so far have worn it with a jumper over the top anyway it's not a deal breaker for me as that way it is fine.

Thank you again to Helen for the generous fabric gift!