The Darling Lou Dress

This is the very seasonally inappropriate Darling Lou dress.  It's a mash-up of Megan Nielsen's Darling Ranges dress, and Tilly And The Buttons Lilou dress. 

 

This dress has been in the planning for a while now.  Since last May to be exact, when I saw Lizzie's Darling Ranges dress with a gathered skirt.  I really loved this, (especially the birdies fabric!) and thought the gathered skirt looked great.  Also, it has a faux placket (so no faffing about with buttonholes) and a zip in the side seam.

And this is what I had planned to make until about three weeks' ago when I saw Jo's shirt dress.  How gorgeous is this?!  I love this dress for several reasons.  1 - It's purple, and I have some very similar purple fabric which I had already planned to make a shirt dress with.  2. I love the details of the pleats on the skirt and the sleeves. The skirt pleats reminded me of the Lilou dress, so this is what I decided to use instead of a gathered dirdnl skirt.

I used the sleeve cuffs from Tilly And The Buttons Mathilde blouse

I drafted the bodice and sleeves using my block, but instead of following Lizzie's example and using a faux placket, I gave myself extra work by making a proper placket.  I'm glad I did though, because I wanted to practice plackets, and I love how it turn out.  Also, it helps to be able to unbutton the placket to get it on and off.  

Placket innards

Which leads me onto the side zip.  I like pockets in my dresses (these pockets are from good old Simplicity 2444), which meant that I had to end the zip above the top of the pocket on one side seam.  As I'm small, the distance between the underarm and pocket top was 10.5", so allowing for 1" below the underarm and 1/2" above the pocket, I ended up using a 9" zip.  I was hoping that this would be long enough, and it just about is (I'll just have to be careful when putting on/taking off), but it would be better to have a longer zip.  Which lead me onto thinking about how to sew an invisible zip into a side seam with a pocket.  I have googled it, but haven't had much luck.  There has to be a way around this, so if anybody knows, I'd be very grateful if you'd let me know!  I'm going to have a play about with some fabric scraps and a zip to see if I can work it out.

 

I'm so glad that I went with the Lilou skirt, it is lovely and flouncy, even in this light weight fabric.  I just folded in the seam allowance on the centre back and cut the skirt back on the fold.  Expect to see this skirt featuring in other makes; I have fabric for two more dresses that I plan to use it with (one being the purple shirt dress), and have ideas for another two.

 

The seasonally inappropriate fabric is some random viscose fabric from Sew N Sew in Belfast.  It was £3 per metre and 60" wide, so I bought 3 metres, and have about a metre left.  I soaked it in gelatine to stiffen it up a bit using the tutorials here and here, which I have done before with success.  It is then washed out when the garment is finished.  I recently read a tip about laying slippery fabric out on the carpet before cutting it to stop it shifting so much.  I wish I'd tried this, as I cut it on the wooden floor, and it still shifted a bit even with the gelatin.  But I'll know for next time, as I have some more of this fabric in a different print.

And because my fabric is so light, I thought a rolled hem might look nice on it.  Ages ago, I had got a Craftsy class called Beginners Serging, and learnt how to do a rolled hem on it.  This is a 4-thread rolled hem, and I thought it looked a bit sturdier than how my 3-thread rolled hem turned out.   My overlocker is a Brother 1034D which seems to be a popular model, so for anybody that is interested in trying this out, here are the settings that I used.

Remove the stitch finger - see page 42 of the instruction book for how to do this.

Left needle tension - 4

Right needle tension - 4

Upper looper tension - 4

Lower looper tension - 6

Stitch width - R

Stitch length - R

 

This is the first rolled hem that I've done, and I love how it turned out.  I would definately advice practising on a fabric scrap first though!

I'm delighted with my dress, even if it's too cold to wear such a light weight fabric just now; and because I didn't have any instructions to follow, I wrote some out as I went along on this notepad that my Dad gave me.  How great is this?  It has buttons on it, and ric rac! 

  

Have a great week!

Lynne