McCall's 6069 Jersey maxi dress

I feel bad for posting a summery maxi dress with bomb cyclones and storm Eleanor wreaking havoc elsewhere, but the reality is this dress won't see the light of day until at least May by which time I will have forgotten all about it.  Stay safe and warm out there.

I spent the holidays in Phuket, Thailand to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday with his large family who came out from the UK.  Of course I wanted to make something new to wear, but also something easy and not too dressy.  I used McCall's 6069, an easy knit pattern I've made several times before.  The pattern envelope calls this a 1 hour dress, but I don't think I'd ever be able to make anything that quickly.  Maybe 3 in total?

I made the sleeveless cowl version, but changed the skirt to maxi length and left a slit in one side seam.  The ITY jersey fabric is from China and has all my favourite colours in it so I'm glad to have used it for this special occasion.

I added a strap across the back (as shown for view C, the square front neck version) otherwise there is a tendency for it to fall off the shoulder with the deep cowl in the back.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of me before the party and I have only just noticed now that the back strap needs to be a bit shorter!  Oh well!

Unfortunately this pattern has been out of print now for a while, but if you like easy knit dresses I'd recommend it if you can find it somewhere, I've got good use out of it over the years and am sure I'll use it again.  I'm wondering now why I haven't yet made the long sleeve version....

Style Arc Imogen Maxi Knit Skirt

I really need to stop making sweeping statements on my blog.  A couple of posts after saying I always wear knit dresses all summer long, lately I have only been making skirts!  Here is one of them, a knit maxi skirt from Style Arc.  I am fairly sure I received this pattern as one of the monthly freebies with a purchase of any pattern.  I mean, I do really like it, but it's such a simple pattern I doubt I would have paid full price for it.

Style Arc Imogen

I had quite a lot of fabric left over from my black and white knit dress and I didn't want another dress in the same fabric so it seemed like a good opportunity to try out this pattern.

I didn't have quite enough fabric for the folded yoga pant style waistband so I just made a regular waistband with elastic inserted in it to fit my waist and making sure it would stretch over my hips.   In reality I will probably always wear tops untucked so this may be a better choice of waistband for me anyway.

Construction is very easy and very fast, it's one skirt pattern piece, cut 4 times and sewn together.  However the cut is lovely and I really like how it is quite sleek at the top and satisfyingly swishy round the ankles.

The fabric pattern and folds created a pattern that my camera did not like at all, but anyway....

My cats were obsessed with getting under the skirt which is sort of helpful for seeing some of the flare I suppose.

At full price I admit this is quite an expensive pattern for how simple it is, but I do love the drafting of Style Arc patterns if you don't need much in the way of instructions.  There must be similar offerings out there from other companies - among the big ones I found McCall's 7386 , a similar shape, but without the centre front and back seams and McCall's 7130 with even more seams.

I will definitely be making this skirt again soon, it's perfect for summer which is well and truly here in all it's humid glory!

BurdaStyle Maxi Skirt & Tank Top on me!

I finally got around to taking photos of me wearing the maxi skirt and tank from my last post.  I don't really like taking photos of myself at the best of times, but I had a bout of bronchitis that made me feel even less like doing it.  It took a month to fully get rid of it and today I did a big photo session so I am covered for this and my next 2 projects!

As much as I don't like doing it, I have to admit I always learn something and see things differently through a camera than in a mirror.  I also know that if I only need to take a few photos to get a decent one then that outfit is a winner.

What I learnt with this outfit is that I much prefer the top tucked into the skirt so I am really glad I lengthened it now.   It also confirmed that I did a horrible job on the neckline, but I can live with it.

As a reminder the patterns are both from BurdaStyle:

Skirt - 01/2016 - 106
Top - 04/2015 - 103

Top untucked....

vs. top tucked in...

I did attempt a twirling photo, but it was a total disaster so this will have to do, it's a lovely swishy skirt!

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Burda Style 02/2013 - 115 Maxi dress

I'm thrilled to hear lots of you are planning to visit Hong Kong, I think I have contacted you all already, but just to extend the offer if anyone is ever here and fancies a meet up or fabric shopping tour please do drop me a note.

Not only have I been sewing a lot recently, I've also just got around to photos so lets catch up on some projects that are in the blog queue.

Back in September last year I first made this maxi dress from the 02/2013 issue of BurdaStyle.

Here's the original Burda pattern :

On my original post I mentioned that I might make it again as a shorter dress.  Usually stating stuff like that on my blog means it will never happen, but this time it did.

Sort of.

I tried this as a shorter dress using some blue snakeprint jersey, it was around knee length before I pinned the hem and looked great  until I tried it on!  It just looked awful, very frumpy and unflattering.  I can't claim to really understand why, but the proportions just did not work - on me at least, I expect if you have amazing legs and washboard abs it would look good, but let's face it anything would!

I still really like the top of the dress and didn't want to waste it so using the leftover strips of fabric I turned it back into a maxi by adding a ruffle cut on the cross grain so that the pattern mismatch didn't look too odd.





There are a couple of other small changes I made - I left off the shoulder gathering to get a bit of shoulder coverage and also left off the waist ties which I thought would not work on a shorter dress.  I would quite like to have them on this longer version, but no fabric so it will stay as it is.

Despite some disappointment along the way I like how this turned out and while I don't need a ton of maxi dresses in my life at least now this one looks a bit different to it's predecessor.