A Lilou Dress

In my last post, I mentioned that I was trying to lose some weight before making myself anything new! I've lost another pound this week, so that makes five pounds in total so far! I've been trying to finish a few things off instead...

s

Anyway I finally got round to finishing off this dress that I started ages ago this week.  The dress is the Lilou Dress from Love at First Stitch by Tilly Walnes.  The dress features a scoop neckline and the bodice is fully lined. There are also options for making a scalloped neckline version and normally features a pleated skirt.

This is the hardest project in the book. This is the first time I've attempted a lined bodice and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

The material was a cotton that I had originally planned to make a skirt from. As I only had a metre and a half of fabric, I did not have enough material for the pleated skirt.  I decided to make the version using the Clemence skirt pattern from Love at First Stitch, which is a simple gathered skirt that you draft  yourself.

Unfortunately the really gathered skirt isn't that flattering on my hips at the moment although it looks lovely on my dummy! If I was to make this pattern again I would make sure that I had enough material to make the pleated skirt or use a less gathered skirt such as the skirt from my  New Look 6262.

For the bodice, I cut a size 5 based on my measurements and the fit is pretty good. I did not need to make a FBA this time. I made a muslin of the bodice first and moved the darts down by an inch, something I seem to have to do on most patterns.The bodice is lined with a cotton voile that I had in my stash which is lovely and lightweight.  The instructions were very clear and I think I would like to use this method again as it finishes the dress beautifully inside.   Unfortunately I think I should also have shorted the straps by a small amount as they do tend to slip off my shoulders.  I didn't notice this at the muslin stage.



The bodice is hand-stitched using tiny invisible stitches to the skirt. It took me a bit of time to work out how to do the slip-stitch but it definitely is worth doing.

The invisible zip is pretty good too although it does gape out a bit at the top of the back neckline. I don't know if maybe the fabric stretched out even though I stay stitched the neckline?

I didn't want to shorten the dress by turning a double hem so I used white bias binding to finish the hem and I think this is a really neat way of hemming a dress.

I'm pretty pleased with this dress, and as the weather has improved it might even get worn this week!

Have you made the Lilou dress? Did you have to make any adjustments to it?

Catherine x