The Washi Dress

What a lovely sunny day and as promised, here is my latest make, the Washi dress by Made by Rae.

Can you see Oscar?

I coerced my daughter into taking the photos. As you can see,my cat was keen to get into the photos.

I made this using some cotton that I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia, that I posted about here. The fabric came from Simply Fabrics and was very reasonably priced, about £5 a metre if I remember rightly.

The Washi dress is a simple make, and perfect for beginner dressmakers.

Washi dress by Made by Rae

I fell in love with it after seeing it on pinterest. It features a cut-out scoop neckline, although I decided to omit this as I felt it might be a bit low cut for everyday life.  It features a pleated front and a shirred back. It also has built in pockets.  It can be made with or without sleeves and also can be adapted as a tunic or maxi dress. It's a fairly expensive pattern to download at $16 dollars (roughly £10) but I figured this would be a dress that I could make again and again.

 There is also a Washi dress expansion pack which can be purchased if you want to add further looks.

Washi dress expansion pack by Made by Rae

I also found that there is a free tutorial and pattern piece for long sleeves that can be downloaded here, so there are lots of options for this dress.

Based on my high bust measurement, I decided to make a size M. In the instructions, Rae recommends making a muslin of the bodice. I did this for the first time ever using an old pillow case and was very glad as it was clear I needed a full bust adjustment (FBA).  I followed the tutorial that can be found on Simplicity's website for increasing the size of a dart.  I did a one inch FBA. I also lowered the bust dart by adding an inch below the armhole.

Remember any changes you make to the bodice pattern piece, you have to also make the back pattern piece!

This lengthened the bodice and on making my second pillow case muslin, I decided I had a good fit and could cut in to my material!

The dress was fairly easy to construct and the instructions are very detailed and clear. They are also fully illustrated with either drawings or photos. The darts are french darts which I'd not come across before. The other unusual thing is that the seam allowances are either 1/4 inch at the armhole and neckline or 1/2 inch at the side and shoulder seams instead of the usual 5/8 inches.

The skirt is pleated and then sewn to the front bodice.

The back bodice is then shirred. I hand winded the shirring elastic bobbin and then sewed in straight rows using the normal thread in the needle, pulling the material straight as I sewed across after the first row.  Rae gives a lot of information about how to shirr with elastic thread and if it's the first time you've done it like me, you will find this very useful.

The dress is faced at the neckline and then once the sleeves are attached,  bias binding is applied at the armholes. I decided to stitch mine on the outside as my hand-sewing is not great, I made my own bias binding using the same fabric and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I had to give it a real blast of steam to get a few wrinkles out though.

Finally I machine hemmed the dress. I didn't change the length of the dress as I liked it as it was.

I'm sure I will make dress again! I might leave out the pockets as I think the skirt would sit better without them. There is a tiny back neckline gape that I could fix but it's really not that noticeable.

I also think I need to invest in a tailor's ham for pressing those bust darts.

Have you made the Washi dress yet and do you love it too?

Catherine x

Exciting news...My New Look 6022 dress is featured on the Minerva crafts blog!

Well I got a lovely surprise pop up on Twitter today. A few months earlier, I'd posted about my second version of New Look 6022 and Minerva crafts contacted me to ask if they could feature it in a future blog post..

I first wrote about New Look 6022 here ...

and then here.

Anyway I had more or less forgotten about this when I saw this tweet.

Pop by the Minerva crafts blog and have a look!

On other sewing news, I have a new dress that I have just finished, the Washi dress by Made by Rae which hopefully I will get to blog about this weekend if I can get some photos taken!

I'm probably the last person in the world to have made this dress. Although it was a simple make, I learnt some news skills along the way - full bust adjustment, lowering bust darts, shirring... plenty to write about.

I've also cut out another New Look 6262 which I first made here.

This time to be made in a gorgeous strawberry print, perfect for summer.  I will be making view B with or without the sleeves, as I've yet to decide. I will also be trying to tackle the weird gaping back neck thing that I have going on with every dress that I make, using this method I found on the By Hand London blog.

Catherine x

A Sorbetto... and a lightbulb moment.

I decided to tackle something quick and easy as a distraction from the fitting issues I am currently having with the vintage pattern that I am sewing that I posted about here.

I chose the Sorbetto by Collete patterns  as I've seen so many versions of it and it looked very quick and easy.  It's a free download that you can get here.

Collete Sorbetto

I used some material from my stash time that I picked up last time I went to Goldhawk Road. I think its a cotton lawn and was beautiful to sew with. I only had a metre so this top seemed perfect.

It's a great basic pattern and there are so many ways of adapting it, check out the flickr page for more versions.  It's clearly explained and is the perfect top for a beginner to get stitching on. The only thing I can say is that if you followed the cutting layout you would waste a lot of material. I folded my fabric so that the selvedges met in the middle rather than selvedge to selvedge.

Now this is where is gets interesting. I chose the size 10 based on my body measurements. (This is not a UK size 10 by the way). I include a link to the size chart  if you are interested in the sizing for Collete patterns.  I downloaded the free pattern and printed it out and stuck it together. This is the first time I have done this and actually it was not as bad as I expected. Bearing in mind, I normally trace all my patterns, I think this has to be slightly quicker for me and it was nice not cutting flimsy tissue paper.  The only change I made was adding a couple of inches to the bottom of the pattern as a lot of the blog posts I've read about this top said it came up very short.

Once the top was put together, I tried it on and found the armholes were really gaping and the back was a bit loose.  A quick google search on gaping armholes, helped me discover where I've been going wrong all this time getting tops to fit me.  By making tops and dresses to my bust size, the rest of the top is often too large for my frame. In the past I have combated this by removing fabric from the back seam, as I did for New Look 6356. This is exactly the problem I'm having with my vintage dress and I have currently had to rip the zip out, hence the reason for putting it to one side. 

All this time I should have been looking at my high bust measurement which is between four to five inches less than my full bust measurement. It seems I need to start doing a full bust adjustment to the pattern pieces before I even start! Most patterns are drafted to a B cup although Collette patterns are drafted to a C cup. This means if the difference between your high bust and your full bust is more than 2 inches on a pattern drafted for a B cup, you need to do a full bust adjustment!  I don't really class myself as having that big a bust, and always presumed that full bust adjustments (otherwise known as FBAs) were for the really large and busty amongst us! Seems I'm wrong.  Looking at my high bust measurement, I should have cut a size 4 and then done the full bust adjustment.

For those of you wanting to try a FBA on the Sorbetto top, I found this very useful tutorial on I could make that. Another method for solving the armhole gape seems to be pivoting an armhole dart in to the bust dart, see this excellent post on Makery.

I also found this excellent tutorial on how to fix a gaping armhole by inserting a dart into a top without a dart at Sew Country Chick using the above method which I will certainly be referring to again.

Hmm this is really a lot to be thinking about... It's too late for this particular Sorbetto top but certainly worth seeing if I can fix it for next time using the FBA method.

An inside view. Neat huh. 

All  in all, it's a lovely top and it's just a shame the fit isn't that great. I can still wear it and the armhole gape isn't as bad as it was before the bias binding was added. I'm particularly pleased with the sewing I did on this top as I finished it beautifully with French seams. I didn't have one of those bias binding gadgets so I didn't make proper bias binding, just pressing the edges under when finishing the bias binding so that the bias tape measured exactly one inch. I achieved a good finish this way and I'm converted to making my own bias tape as it's much softer than shop bought tape and it isn't that difficult to make.

Front pleat and neck bias

The final lesson I've learnt from making this top is that muslins may seem like a lot of extra effort but I think I need to start making them! It's worth testing your pattern out so that can make any necessary adjustments before cutting into your expensive fabric.

So I think I will be treating myself to a couple of books about using and adapting sewing patterns to get a better fit. Any good recommendations? 

Do you always make a muslin? Or any other good tips? 

Catherine x