I’ve made a new dress… a sweet little autumn dress. It’s a quiet dress, and demurely plain in colour; which really throws up the details of the design into the spotlight. The colour fits in with my current clothes-making criteria; to have things in my wardrobe that go with as many of my self-made shoes as possible! since I will be wearing only my own shoes this year and some of my shoes are kinda colourful and not basic.
Pattern; Vogue 1152, with minor modifications. This is the second time I’ve made the pattern up for myself, my previous version has just been transferred to the “possible good sammies pile” since I realised I barely wore it last year. The additional modifications I made to the pattern for this new version are in line with the things I grew to dislike about my first version.
Fabric; soft slubby cotton from Fabulous Fabrics. I love the grey; a soft and warmish, almost yellow-y kind of a grey, if that makes sense, and one that actually suits me, I believe. This fabric originally came out in four colours; red, blue, white and grey, and I bought some of each colour! pretty groundbreaking stuff for me, I generally would not be so extravagant but the fabric really is beautiful quality so I just had to! Actually I’ve just revised my memory; it came in black too, which I did NOT buy and did kick myself over shortly after.. Doh! This is the last piece I bought to be made up… I’ve previously made up the blue as a dress here, the red as another dress here and the white as a shirt and shorts set here.
Pattern mods; the V-neck in my first version was so low-cut as to expose the bridge of my bra; so I either had to be sure to wear a pretty, colour co-ordinating bra that day, or a scarf knotted at the front. So this time I raised the height of the V-apex by about 2.5cm… at least I’m decent now.
Sleeves; left off the cuffs, removed about 12cm in width from the middle of each sleeve and lengthened them by 10cm; instead of lots of pleats at the top there is just one single inverted (box) pleat at the top of the sleeve cap. I also made a separate tab or strap that is sewn near the lower edge of the sleeve and wraps around it, catching in the fullness of the sleeve and buttoning upon itself. Shell buttons from my stash. A buttoned tab is not the kind of thing you see on a dress sleeve very often, it is the same principle to the tab/strap that you put on the end of coat sleeves, but I like to be different, appropriating and subverting details like that here and there and thus customising my clothing in some small way. Just one of the reasons I sew for myself!
Also, maybe I’m just a rebel, I hardly ever follow a pattern obediently and just always have to deviate in some small thing. Just one little bit of me in there, somehow, somewhere.
I added an extra row of elastic casing in the back to pull it in more, like I did for the first version, because otherwise it all just looks a bit pouffy back there.Also; added inseam side pockets – well naturelment!.. and lengthened the dress by about 15cm.
Below is my full outfit for today… I included it here because I’m absolutely loving how the grey looks with my mustard cardigan! so much so that I’ve worn this same outfit twice this week, throwing it on again the minute it came off the clothes line! There’s just something about mustard and grey together, I just have a thing for it. Though I’m sure it will go really well with all my other cardigans too. As well as my shoes and some tights. It’s a real autumnal dress, and I can’t wait to mix and match it with all the rest of my more cool weather-y stuff during me-made May. Hurrah for new dresses! 
Details:
Dress; Vogue 1152 with slight modifications, see my first version and original review of this pattern here
Cardigan; the Miette, a free pattern by Andi Satterlund, details here
Shoes; sandals worn below made by me here, black thongs in the first picture made by me here
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