The fabric for this dress came compliments of Organic Cotton Plus. They sent me an email asking me if I’d be interested in some fabric of my choice in exchange for my review. I was very flattered, and obvoiusly said yes, because here I am reviewing it. I chose the pale aqua sateen. The color shown on their website looked sort of gray, but in reality it’s an icy Tiffany blue. It has a very subtle sheen so it can be dresssed up or down.
They sent me 2 yards and that was way more then enough to make this dress. The fabric is 110″ wide, so it felt a bit awkward cutting it out. This fabric reminded me a lot of nice bed linens to be honest. I ended up moving to the floor because the fabric was too large for my dining room table.
This fabric is is sort of medium bodied so I thought it would hold up the structure that this design requires. The bodice is self lined and also self underlined. This pattern has sort of a bad reputation on sewing pattern review, the main problem mentioned by reviewers is that the bodice lining is too short. I added an inch to all of my lining/ underlining pieces and then trimmed the lining down to match the bodice length. This seemed to fix the problem.
When you make this dress you need to make sure that you follow the directions *exactly*. The pleats and folds that make the draped look of the bodice do not go together intuitively. I went ahead of the directions and ended up having to go back and rip out stitches. If you take your time and follow the directions and diagrams, this dress is no more difficult than any other style of bodice.
I did a machine blind hem to finish this and inserted a lapped zipper. I had to insert this zipper three times. Holy moly!?!?! This first time I didn’t refer to any resources and tried to go by memory. It looked awful! The second zipper, I used Sunni’s free zipper class on Craftsy. That zipper looked perfect. When I went to use it the first time that zipper failed. Ughhh! Then I looked in my stash and found this last zipper which was a better color match anyways. I decided to machine the zipper to the under part, and hand-pick the overlap. There was one thing I didn’t like about this fabric. It’s so tightly woven that it shows needle holes and they don’t steam out. I hand-picked to minimize damage, in case I’d have to do it a fourth time.Note to self: I used a universal needle. In the future I’ll make sure to use a sharps needle with this fabric. That should lessen the puncture holes.
I don’t think anyone should be afraid of this pattern. It has such cute details. This organic cotton was the perfect match for the pattern. I recommend checking out Organic Cotton Plus if ethical fabric is important to you. It really is a quality fabric. I plan on using the rest that I have to underline a pair of lace shorts.
xx, Cynthia
