Sally’s Kew Dress!
A Kew to admire
Hey everyone!
At last we are getting longer days and more sunshine which means more dresses! Yes I know at the beginning of the year I said that I was really into making pretty dresses. But when I saw the mustard hearts viscose it was meant to be a pretty dress.
I’ve had the Kew dress for ages now and thought it was about time it was made as fellow blogger Rosysewsmodernvintage has made a beauty just recently.
I decided on version 1 with the ruched sleeves as you’ll know if you live up north that we don’t get many warm days and wanted a dress that was easy to wear and layer if needed.
According to my measurements I was to make a size 16 and the grad to 20 for the hips. I had a feeling that a narrow shoulder adjustment would be needed when cutting out the pattern but I ignored my gut… silly me! I made my usual adjustment of shortening the skirt by 4” and I wanted this to have pockets so I borrowed a pocket pattern piece from another pattern.
So when it came to trying the bodice on of course the shoulders were far too wide for me.
So I did a lazy adjustment of starting at the top of the shoulder seam by taking off 1.5cm and then taper it down to the bottom of the armhole. Luckily, that did the trick! Once I had unpicked my stitches and overlocked hem!!!
The dress came together really quickly but it was a bit of a long slog with 15 buttonholes to make! Thankfully my machine has a 1 step buttonhole foot so it made the process a lot easier. Also, a great tool to have is a button hole cutter rather than using a pin and seam ripper as I’ve had plenty of accidents using that method in the past.
I don’t like my machine to sew buttons on for some reason and find it quite nice to sit on the sofa and hand sew even with my cat ‘assisting’.
Thankfully over the Easter weekend we had a nice enough day to sit in my parents back garden with a cuppa and exchange Easter eggs.
Of course I had some scraps left to make myself a hair tie where the lovely Jayne has made a template and instructions to make your own. It really is easy to coordinate your outfits
Excuse the Grey’s am in dire need of the hairdresser’s!!
Happy Sewing
Sally xx
