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Harriet’s Eve Dress

This month was one that was pretty out of this world – I’m forever losing tape measures, but the monochrome Merchant & Mills one that arrived this month will most definitely not end up mysteriously disappearing!

I hadn’t made anything for mum for a while, so I decided that whatever was in this box, no matter how much I loved it, it’d be going to mum. She works in a school so needs to look a bit more grown up than she actually is, and when I saw this fabric I knew that it’d make a very wonderful wrap dress for her to wear to work. I only had one wrap dress pattern that worked for this sort of fabric which happened to be the Sew Over It Eve dress; I know, I know, I make far too many Sew Over It patterns – I promise that next month won’t be one!

The georgette that arrived this month. Well, by George (geddit?!) it’s lovely, but super slippery! It took me multiple days to pin and cut out the pattern because I kept having arguments with it, but once it got to actually sewing it together, we were best buds… as long as you use quite a lot of pins!

The fabric worked wonderfully for the pattern, and behaved very well when it was pressed, thank goodness! It did take a little bit of extra work to make sure that corners of things were always nicely pointed, and I gave everything a double press at the end because I noticed it had a little bit of a tendency to curl under.

The dress itself came together quite quickly, and the quite stark difference in colour between the right and wrong side really helped to avoid any catastrophes! The neckline needed to be stabilised with stay tape, but as I didn’t have any of that to hand, I used some medium/heavy weight interfacing instead which seems to have done the job just fine. There aren’t any facing at all around the dress, and the front edge and neckline was only turned in 1cm which I was a little bit unsure of – I think I might turn it under 1.5cm if I make it again, because as mum put the dress on, the overlocking of the front edge decided that it wanted to be on display, and so needs a little bit of persuading to stay in the right place! As it’s a wrap dress, I don’t think that the fit would be affected at all if I increased the width by which it’s turned over so that it’s easier to keep flat.

I altered he dress ties a little bit, and made each tie half of the length that it’s meant to be – we’re all quite small in our family, mum included, so I thought that if I kept the ties to the length they were meant to be, they’d end up by her feet while she was wearing it! I’m really glad I made them to the shorter length – Hopefully you’ll agree when you look at the photos that the ties are the right length in proportion to everything else!

I’ve never worn a proper wrap dress, only ones that have a wrap bodice and a normal skirt (read: the Lena Wrap Dress by Simple Sew patterns) so I was a bit baffled as to why I needed to leave a little unstitched gap in one of the side seams at the waist. It turns out, though, that you put one of the ties through this little hole so that it’s considerably less likely that the dress will become untied and open out by chance – what a genius little idea that is!

I really enjoyed using the georgette this month and making something a bit more sophisticated than I might do usually; it’s always good to try something out of your comfort zone! And don’t worry, I’ll keep to my promise next month and use a pattern from a different company!