I made this dress months ago! like in April! … however because I made it to test the pattern I had to keep it a secret until its release, and it wasn’t released until the end of May. And at that time, not only was it getting too cold for me to really wear it regularly, but I was getting overwhelmed with preparation and planning for the release of our own Yallingup pattern, and so although I did post about it on Instagram I didn’t get around to blogging my own version here.
This is the Ingrid dress/blouse pattern by Homer and Howell, and it’s a really interesting design. Something to get you thinking a bit, which is always nice in a pattern. It has several different views; a top and dress in two different lengths, and two sleeve versions. I made view B; the mini dress with plain sleeves.
All views have an interesting central pleat on the bodice and the dress version has different skirt panels, some cut on a slant at the top, so you kind have to be on your toes to get them all cut out and dealt with in the right way.
I really enjoyed making mine, and I remember the instructions for gathering the skirt panels were really awesome and taught me something new about gathering things neatly and well.
One thing I noticed in other tester versions was that the split at the back of the neck tended to gape a bit, which looked like it was due to the split being a bit long, so I reduced the length of my own by about 1 ½”, or about 4ish cm, and accordingly shortened the facing piece too; and I think this turned out better.
For fabric, I used a piece of greyish/orange cotton voile that Mum had thrown out from her own stash … yes the colour sounds kind of hideous and I really didn’t like it, but was optimistic about being able to dye it a nice colour. In preparation for this moment; I had used navy blue thread and also navy blue overlocking thread to finish the raw edges inside… and then boiled it up in a pot of half-strength iDye in deep blue, and I really love the resulting colour. Much much nicer!
I’d also used a blue, love-heart shaped button … .btw, cute?! A nice side effect to committing to using up my stash this year is that I get to be creative with fabrics and notions I’ve long ignored because “I don’t like it”. And now I do really like this dress! Every single thing for this was from Le Never-Ending Stash… which of course IS going to come to an end some day…
Because it was cold the day I finally got to show it; this is how I actually wore it for its debut during me-made May. Apologies for the grainy iPhone photo, I’d accidentally deleted the original from my phone and had to screenshot this from my Instagram account which is why it looks so bad… I’m wearing it here with my suede leather “coatigan”/coat/jacket thing… and selfdrafted leggings. btw these leggings used to be tights, but this year I took out the tights I’d made that had developed holes in the heels and/or toes from being worn hundreds of times, and cut off the toes, hemming the new edge with my twin needle. So now they have a new lease on life as leggings. I can wear them like this, with bare feet and my clogs, or I can still wear them with my boots on the coldest days of winter with a pair of my cosy hand-knit socks. Win, win!
The post sea-blue Ingrid dress appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.