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...

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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

A Megan dress

Let me start by saying I love this dress.  I made this dress towards the end of last year, and am only just getting round to blogging it.

The dress is a flattering fitted shape, with a high waistline and a gentle A-line skirt.  The bodice has bust darts and dart tucks at the front and darts at the back.  It also has pretty gathered sleeves and has an invisible zip.

This is the third pattern I have made from the marvellous Tilly and the Buttons' book  "Love at First Stitch". As usual the pattern is clearly written with step by step photos and detailed instructions.  I found this a relatively easy make and I love the fact that Tilly clearly explains anything that you might be unsure about such as darts, or inserting an invisible zip.

The pattern recommends 1.5 metres of 150cm wide fabric, I squeezed this out of 1.2 metres with no problem. I used a 100 % cotton that I bought from myfabrics.co.uk. The fabric only cost me about £7 - bargain. I purposely used something inexpensive as I wanted to treat this as a "wearable" toile.

Tilly has her own system of measurements. I made size 4 based on my measurements and graded out to a size 5 in the hip area which I'm glad I did.  It's a fairly good fit apart from some gaping at the back of the neck. The bust is also a little tighter than in the image in Tilly's  book.

The gaping didn't appear to be a problem when I tried the dress on before inserting the invisible zip so I'm wondering if the material stretched out of shape when I inserted the zip? I also think that I need to tackle a full bust adjustment next time as discussed in my blog post here. I also have trouble reaching the top of the zip to do the dress up so not sure what fitting issue this indicates. Something to do with the position of the armholes? Any ideas?

The only head scratching moment I had when making this dress was when I could not get the bodice and the skirt to align at the darts, After half an hour or so, I finally figured that I had sewn the skirt back pieces to the front the wrong way up. Doh!

All in all this pattern is a winner, and I will definitely be making this dress again with a couple of adjustments.

Catherine x