gardenia dress

Well, my optimistic blogging plan entirely fell through there, but in my defence, we moved in the last week, and that causes the majority of plans to fall through. Including breakfast plans, because I still can't find anything in the kitchen. 

Anyhow, here's the dress I made a few weeks back and showed little peeks of during me-made-May. I didn't really love it at first, because I felt it looked a bit like a hospital gown, but it's grown on me.

I used the Gardenia dress pattern from Califaye. The pattern calls for a knit, but my fabric was a woven, so I sized up (from a small to a medium). I think that the small would probably fine as well though, because this one fits a bit looser than I like. It's actually so light an airy that the first morning I wore it to work I was really not into it because I felt like my butt was hanging out the whole time. Luckily I've gotten used to it (and had multiple assurances that everything's covered).

I didn't bother with french seams, and instead just pinked them all, since it was kind of a wearable muslin. After it was finished, I cut 5" off of the sleeves, and 3 1/4" off the hem.

The only other change I made was to add a little keyhole at the back of the neck, in order to negate some possible frumpiness. After a fair amount of debate, I chose to finish it with a bias binding (same as the neckline), since I have never done facings (soon!). I wasn't able to make it lie very flat at the bottom, but it's not terrible. Most of the time I forget it is there anyhow.

There is some pulling around the backs of the armholes, as you can see below. I think it's just a matter of reducing the curve there a little bit.

And it has pockets! This was my first time sewing pockets like this. They are starting to pull a little at the tops, so I have to figure out how to strengthen that area a bit.

Last week I discovered (in an attempt to be even a little cooler at work), that this dress also looks super cute with the sleeves cuffed up a couple times, which also reduces a bit of the granny look.

The flowy skirt resulted in a fair number of risque jumping photos, but there were at least these two which I couldn't decide between.
Thanks for reading!