Sally’s Shelby!

8th November 2020

Hey everyone, hope you’re all keeping well, staying home and sewing! Here is my next project as a Felicity Fabrics Blogger.

I decided to finally make the True Bias Shelby Dress after being inspired to make this after watching the GBSB where Liz made a 90’s inspired dress and thought I want one of my own! Heck, I was in my early teens at the end of 90’s… showing my age now! I remember big floppy velvet hats, pinafores and spaghetti strap dresses with a white tee underneath.

Now I didn’t want to relive the floppy hat that’s for sure!

So I had a nosey round the fabrics and came across this beauty of Lady McElroy Pyramidi Print Viscose Twill and it was destined to be made into a Shelby.

As always Caroline and Fliss package your goodies with upmost care and attention to detail and I really look forward to receiving my packages from them.

As soon I unpackaged my goodies I soon put my fabric into wash!

I do tend to toile as I don’t like to waste precious fabrics so after reading the measurements and then looked at the finished garments measurements I felt that the size 12 would fit really well and to grade to a 14 for the hips.

Does anyone else iron their fabric before cutting or is that just me?

The only blip I had when cutting out the fabric is that it does snag easily with pins and it shows through with being white underneath so to stop that from happening I resorted to use my scissors and pattern weights.

After consulting my fellow Felicity Fabrics teamies, I couldn’t get hold of a micotex needle so had a small universal needle which worked just as good and instead of pins used fabric clips and it worked a treat.

I did have to take breaks when sewing this not due to the construction of the dress but I just couldn’t get my sewjo in gear but when I did managed to get some more of it complete, it was just looking lovely.

To minimise any snags, to gather my sleeve heads I used the dental floss trick and it worked perfectly and was able to get the sleeves in first time without any puckering.

This is such an apt label for this make, the lovely Joy at Pinkcoatclub makes these.

Instead of using buttons and sewing buttonholes I went for the safe option and installed snaps instead! I used my Prym Pliers and snaps, they all went in first time no problems.