An oldie but a goodie

With this make I've returned to an old pattern that was everywhere in the blogosphere at one point and I've already made several versions of, a couple of versions here and here.  It is of course the By Hand London Anna dress.  Despite having made this dress a number of times, I have never made the V-necked version so it was nice to try something new while still in the realm of the familiar.

The fabric I used is one of a pair of sheets I picked up in a charity shop a few years back.  I used one of them to make this vintage shirtdress.  Unfortunately as it was my first version of the shirtdress, it was a bit short in the torso and while I loved it I was never that comfortable in it so eventually donated it.  On the plus side I had plenty more of the fabric which I loved so time for dress number 2 from a sheet!  I started my dressmaking journey with a lot of refashioning projects and while I now buy a lot of fabric, I love when I am able to return to some refashioning and to pursue my hobby a bit sustainably.

I always feel like the Anna bodice is a bit short on me (spot the long torso theme) so I lengthened this one by about 5cm.  It may have been a cm too much but I'm not going to get too picky about it.  With my last Anna dress I had made some alterations to adjust for gaping in the back which I did again this time.  I also decided to add a pleated skirt for a slightly different look and while the calculations behind pleats always defeat me (and I'm usually good at maths!), I got there in the end and really like the finished look.  Despite the pleats, this was really a very quick and satisfying make.

It was really nice to make something up that I'd made before and could be fairly certain was going to work well.  While it's always lovely to get a new pattern and try out new things there is something wonderful about returning to a TNT pattern.