La Paloma Shift Dress

Still enjoying lots of lovely sunny weather here – how is it where you are?

Today I’ve got my main holiday week project to show you – this took the best part of two days, but some of that time was because I had to figure out linings and I wanted to make sure everything was sewed neatly.

The pattern for this dress is New Look K6145 which I got free with Sew magazine a few months ago.

The fabric is Alexander Henry ‘La Paloma’ which I bought at the Knitting & Stitching Show in the spring after scouring all the websites where it was sold out. And the reason it was sold out everywhere is because Deborah made a dress with it on week one of the Sewing Bee this year and it looked AMAZING! Its mid-weight cotton and I just love the bold colours and print with the birds and flowers. Anyway, I was thrilled to find some and quickly snapped up two metres. It’s not a very wide fabric and I’m now wishing I’d bought more to have some spare for future makes, but never mind. The two metres was just right for this shift dress and meant I didn’t have to do any drastic pattern matching across waist seams.

I chose to make version E of the dress – sleeveless, but I left off the collar. I picked and cut out size 14 based on the finished measurements, and lengthened the skirt by 3 inches to take it to knee length on me.

I gave myself an extra challenge this time by deciding to line the dress rather than just using the facings and potentially needing to wear a slip underneath. I got some basic poly-cotton lining that will be cool to wear and not cling. As the pattern instructions don’t include a lining I had to figure this bit out myself, but followed the principles of the all-in-one facing from the Shell Top I made a few weeks ago.

So after I’d made up the two layers as far as sewing in all the darts and joining the shoulders, I attached the lining to the main fabric around the neckline and understitched to keep it sitting flat once turned through, and then joined them at the armholes too. This meant I could then turn the whole thing the right way out by bringing the lining through the shoulder straps and giving everything a really good press. It looks a really neat finish and meant I didn’t need to worry about using bias binding to finish the neck or arms.

Inserting the invisible zip into the centre back seam took a bit of figuring out to get the layers in the right order and I managed to sew main fabric, zip and lining in one go so that the lining is anchored neatly, and meant I didn’t need to do any hand sewing! The back is finished with a skirt vent which I’ve never done before but was pretty simple and give a little more freedom of movement – I mirrored this in the lining too.

This just left the side seams to sew up, and allowed me to shape the dress a little to bring the waist in to fit me a little more closely – I find straight up and down shapes don’t suit me terribly well so just nipping in the waist seams by an extra inch means it has a better silhouette for me. A quick double hem and I was all done!

I’m really delighted with this make – I think the simple shape shows the fabric off beautifully, it’s a comfortable dress to wear and will be great for work over the summer. Plus there’re so many colours in the print I can change up my outfit with a different cardi and shows every time I wear it – I went with orange when I wore it the first time!

The fit still isn’t absolutely perfect, I think I need to take a bit of length out of the upper torso as this is where I’m obviously short compared with the standard measurements – the armholes and bust darts are a little low. I also might lower the neckline into more of a scoop next time, again as a personal preference for what suits me.

I’ve had loads of compliments wearing it though which is lovely to enjoy the “Thank you, I made it myself!” moment. I’m really pleased with how the lining turned out too and will definitely use this method again. I’ll have to look out for more of the fabric too as it’s just fantastic and I’d love to try some other garments with it.

I’ve got one more recent sewing project to show you another day, and I’m currently knitting another cardigan which I’m hoping to get finished before I go away on holiday in mid-August, so I’ll probably be concentrating on that instead of starting any other new projects for the next few weeks. I also need to figure out what projects to take away with me – knitting, crochet, patchwork – what would you suggest?