A Dress for March

As March was heading into the 20s without my doing so much as a stitch I thought I'd better get moving.

The main reason for this is that I have been away for the last two weekends and my weeks have been pretty busy as my job has suddenly become productive, meaning that I'm coming home tired, instead of just vaguely irritated about how bored I've been all day.

This month I decided to do something easy. This was largely dictated by my fabric choice, some Any Butler quilting fabric that was reduced to £5 a metre in Hobbycraft. Anything too complicated in this stuff is just going to look ridiculous. I did plump for view 3 with the square neckline though as I did want to try something a little different. Otherwise though it is your bog-standard shift dress pattern. I made sure that I was going with a pattern than had the front piece cut on the fold as I imagined that matching up panels of this would be a nightmare, which narrowed my search down to about four patterns. I did go for sleeves though, I don't much care for my upper arms.

Even with this being such an easy pattern I was amazed that I managed to get this all done in one day, I think I was lucky though, it was the dress equivalent of all the lights being on green on your journey home. The pattern was simple. The fabric was easy to work with. I had a zip in a matching shade of pink in my stash. I cheated and hemmed the sleeves and the bottom of the dress on the machine (the 'proper sewing' police are probably knocking on my door as I type!). This time I remembered to taper out a little from the waist as I was cutting, which resulting in a much more forgiving hip measurement. Before sewing the sides together I pinned it on my tailor's dummy. The result was a pretty good fit! Hooray.

I was due a good run after my last couple of stressful encounters though.

On a side note I have noticed a real discrepancy in the kinds of fabrics I am drawn to and the types of pattern that I choose. I have loads of colour-block or multi-panelled dress patterns - the type that need good, plain fabric, yet my stash largely consists of crazy prints which would look bizarre made up in anything other than a simple shift. I need to work on this.