Me: What do you think of this photo? Is it a keeper?
Tree: It shows your face [I’m trying to keep some vague sort of web anonymity]
Me: I’m pretty sure if people recognised me it would be because of the full length heart printed dress instead of the slither of forehead…
Another post to add to my “Little chronicles of a small time sewer” collection. To be honest, I probably give my sewing machine a lot more love and attention than my crochet needles at the moment which is why the next few posts are all sewing based! I decided that with each new project I would try to learn at least one new technique.
First up was this heart print cotton from Cape Town. Having watched this year’s Great British Sewing Bee, I learnt that ‘pattern matching’ was 1. an actual thing. 2. apparently quite important. 3. big prints are easier than small prints…or maybe it was the other way around?
Anyway, with Patrick’s voice in my head I got about trying to make a wrap dress in this large heart printed cotton (with it being the 40th anniversary of the iconic DvF wrap dress, I just had to add one to my wardrobe!). For this dress I used a Burdastyle pattern for a short pleated asymmetrical fake-wrap dress.
Theres a few things that were ambitious about this- for one thing I had to elongate the skirt section and secondly with the “if-I’m-going-to-make-clothes-for-myself-I’m-going-to-make-it-as-hijab-friendly-as-possible-because-whats-the-point-otherwise?” attitude, I decided to add long sleeves instead of the short puffy/flap sleeves the pattern called for.
I started like a real keen bean, making sure the middle of the pattern was in the middle of the dress etc etc. And then I got to the skirt…that’s when I threw caution to the wind and went rogue with my pattern matching. It was hard enough trying to edit the pattern to make it ‘maxi’ length let alone match the hearts up! Sorry Patrick, I tried!
In the end I had a bit of trouble with the zip which got unpicked and restitched about 4 times. This is where an unintentional lesson 4 came about- apparently there’s different kinds of zippers?? And for invisible zips you need to buy an invisible zipper because the teeth are smaller and covered by the zipper tape!? (Please correct me if I’m wrong, because this is all news to me!). I must’ve been lucky when I bought the zipper for my graduation dress because that one turned out fine! I was wondering why my last two ‘invisible’ zippers hadn’t worked. Ho Hum. 
In the end, the dress turned into quite the sewing feat. I love the effect of pleating and it’s reeelaaatively simple to do. The dress itself is a little bit out there, style wise, but it’s quite fun. And if sewing isn’t about fun, what is?
love,
little pomegranate