A New Dress

I got the sewing bug again.  A while back I started following a blog about sewing called Straight Grain and it has really inspired me to dust off my sewing machine and get busy making a dress for little girl.  This dress had a few firsts for me; first pattern I bought, first time I bought fabric on the internet, first invisible zip and first time I have ever made something without having to unpick at some point.  The pattern I used was the Hanami top and dress from Straight Grain.  It is such a great pattern and I can't recommend it enough. It comes with a few different options; with or without the collar, two different sleeve types and an option for a zip back or a cross back with buttons.  I asked little girl how she wanted it and she choose to have the zip back with a collar and flutter sleeves. 





















I bought the fabric from a lovely online shop selling beautiful organic fabrics called Georgette.   I bought two different fabrics, the one for the main part of the dress, it was blue with 'passing clouds' and one for the lining which is called 'up in the air', it has little swallows with light blue dots.  When the fabric arrived in the post I realised that the one I chose for the main part of the dress really was not suitable and didn't really go with the bird fabric. I loved the birds and really wanted to use it for the lining, so the challenge was to find something to go with it. I decided not to get something from the internet as it is so hard matching colour from photos, so I paid a visit to a little shop in town that also sells organic fabrics.  It wasn't too difficult to find something and I ended up buying some lovely vintage looking flower fabric that looks lovely with the birds.  They are both from a company called Cloud 9, they have some really gorgeous pattens and prints. 

The pockets weren't in the pattern, I added them on at the end and I wanted to turn them the other way around with the bird fabric on the outside but little girl was not too pleased with my idea and so the birds became the lining again. 

We have had some really lovely weather in the past few weeks and this is just the perfect spring/summer dress.