The Blue Dress

I saw this dress in the newspaper this spring and thought, I’m going to make me a dress just like that. It’s from the Ralph Lauren spring runway collection.

I mean, I’ve been sewing for a gazillion years and even though I don’t sew a lot of clothes these days, for some reason I felt pretty confident that I could figure this out. Well, it took several yards of muslin and a lot of tracing paper, but I now have a dress that looks just like that picture, only blue. I must say that I’m pretty pleased with myself!

How did I do it? Well, I bought the fabric at Josephine’s here in downtown Portland. It’s a beautiful cotton voile. The gals who own the store are so knowledgable about their fabrics and garment sewing. I showed them the picture and they recommended this New Look pattern as a starting point.

The New Look pattern got me the gathered bit in the center of the bodice. I still had to add gathered rectangles of fabric to get the section above the lace.  I wanted the dress to be high up on the neck in the back with a center zipper so I needed a different pattern to get that part.

I also had the challenge of the armhole. The dress in the original advertisement has sleeves. They are little cap sleeves but they are definitely set in as a separate sleeve. So I needed a pattern that would get me an armhole. The Prairie Girl pattern by Favorite Things got me the back and the armhole curve and it also has a similar sleeve to the dress in the advertisement.  I used tracing paper and just kind of melded the  patterns together. I would make a muslin, try it on, pin in any alterations, see how it fit, trace a new pattern with the changes, and so on, until I got it just right. It was quite the process.  When I got the pattern just right, I realized that I needed to line the dress because the voile is very sheer. OMG! I felt like I needed an engineering degree to sew the dress together.

It was a long process, but I enjoyed the challenge quite a bit. I’m going to wear the dress this weekend to a dinner party. Nobody there sews but it will make me smile to know I did it.

I’ve already bought another voile and am going to try and tackle this dress next. I’m a woman obsessed.

Many thanks to darling daughter for the great photographs and the awesome new header for this blog. She is so talented!