I do think clothes can be transformative and this dress makes me feel way more glamours than my actual real life is. In fact this dress reminds me of the period pieces in English tv-series such has Downtown Abbey, Brideshead Revisited or House of Elliot. So as you might have guessed by now – I love this dress!
I’ve had this fabric for like five years, but for the longest time I couldn’t find the right pattern. And I didn’t want to waste this unique fabric on a dress that just felt – okay. So when Burdastyle put this pattern out, I was beyond thrilled, it felt like a match made in heaven. That said, the dress wasn’t heavenly to make. Mostly due to the fabric, it’s very thin and delicate and frays easily, so it feels like it could rip easily. And since it is so transparent I wanted french seams and not serged seams. So it took a lot of fiddling to get everything right.
There is no fusable interfacing on this dress, instead I used silk organza for the zipper opening and button placket. And I stay stitched all the curved seams, such as the sleeves, armscye and neckline to keep them from growing.
Due the fabric properties, the inside is a bit messy to be honest, but I knew I had to live with it or I could have spent the better part of May on this dress. In fact when you look inside RTW garments made in these kind of delicate cotton fabrics, they often have wonky seams too. I will do a separate post later about some of the inner workings of this dress as I didn’t want to taint this escapist post with all the messy stuff 😉
Since the fabric is so delicate I don’t know how long the life span of this dress will be. In fact I wonder if I should only hand wash it just to be sure? Not a lover of hand washing, but this might be a case when it would be totally worth it.
