Summer Favourite

Just a quick post today to show off one of my new favourite dresses! At the end of my last post I mentioned that I was going to get some striped tee-shirt weight knit from Drapers Fabrics, and here is the resulting dress (I paid for this fabric, no collaboration this time). Drapers is still offering readers 15% off with the code FIFTYTWOFANCIES, in case any of you have your eye on any of their pretties!

So…this dress didn’t start off as a winner. I initially had a lengthened version of the Papercut Solar tee in mind, as I thought the dropped shoulder and ruffle combo would look really cute in the stripes, and it would be nice with a belt on hot days. Unfortunately, I completely disregarded the heft of this cotton knit as I was making these plans. It’s a lovely tee shirt weight, almost like a very lightweight ponte, but it was far too stiff for those shoulder ruffles, it was like I had little wings (and not it a cute way)! I always really like the idea of ruffle or big shoulders and sleeves, but in reality adding them on top of my proportionally bigger bust and my super short hair just makes me look like a pinhead. I sulked for a few hours, and then got out the scissors and McCall’s 6886…

So much better! The weight of this fabric is much better suited to a dress which isn’t reliant on draping right to look good (so obvious in hindsight, I need to put a bit more thought into these things sometimes!). Because the Kyoto Tee pattern has straight side seams (which I had flared out slightly as I lengthened it), I had enough fabric once I had cut all the overlocked seams off to re-cut the narrower pattern pieces of M6886 from the existing front and back. Which meant I didn’t have to think about matching the stripes as I was cutting out, because I had already done it the first time around!

I cut the crew neckline again, same as my merino version, but as this is a 100% cotton knit I didn’t trust that turn-and-stitch method for the neckline. Instead I traced off a facing and used that instead. There is still a little bit of gaping around the neckline from it stretching over my head, but I can live with that.

I could probably do with a sway back adjustment for this pattern, or some fish eye darts, but given that it’s such an easy, casual, pull on dress I’m not really worried about a few wrinkles back there! 

I’ve worn this dress several times a week since I finished it, it’s been perfect for the incredible hot weather we’re having. I’ve been slack and had a couple of nasty sunburns already this year, so I love not having to worry about whether I’ve got enough sunblock on my chest and shoulders. 

Yay for not wasting fabric!