A very special Anna

Today’s dress is a bit special to me for a number of reasons. Firstly I made it to wear to the wedding of a my good friend, Katie and it was lovely to have a special dress to celebrate her special day in.  Secondly, I made it in some great fabric I bought in Japan last year.  I have no idea what I was planning to made with this when I bought it, as I purchased 5m which is more than I would usually buy without a plan, however, kudos past Alexa for making good choices! 

 

 

The dress is of course the Anna dress, isn’t it funny how when you make up a pattern that you love you instantly want to make it again.  I haven’t made an Anna dress in a couple of years and now have made 2 versions in the space of a few weeks!  The first version of the Anna that I ever made was the maxi version and I loved floating around in that dress so much, sadly it completely disintegrated as it was made from a viscose that frayed like crazy and I made it before I had an overlocker.  I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to make another to replace it. 

 

 

 Apart from the back alteration that I’ve talked about in other versions, I made the pattern up straight from the pack.  I always find it hard to believe when a dress pattern says it needs something like the 4.5m required for this dress, particularly as I’m usually quite economical with my cutting.  However, a maxi dress with gored skirt really does!  I only have some scraps left over from my 5m!

 

 

 The fabric is a cotton of medium weight and so was a total dream to work with and there'll be no fraying issues with this baby!  I feel that this is a good use of my Japanese stash and I think I'll get a lot of wear out of this once we return to my preferred summer season! 

 

 

The pictures are courtesy of my friend Dominika who is obsessed with photos and getting the perfect photo.  When she makes me take her photo 10 times or makes me pose for mine forever, I whinge a lot but then she get such good results that I really shouldn’t be such a brat about it. 

Thanks Dominika!

The dress was a bit of a last minute scramble as I had a few other things to do for the wedding such as make the veil!  This was a really fun project and it was lovely to feel that I was doing something important for their big day.  It involved a lot more hand sewing than I would usually sign up for and I forgot to get a picture!

What a lovely couple!  I'm definitely glad that I got to be part of their special day and had something to wear that felt appropriately special.

 

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. 

Another birthday dress

I'm aware that I'm slightly milking my birthday this year but hey that's what birthdays are for. As we both turn 30 this summer, my cousin and I decided to have a joint party. So obviously I needed a(nother) new dress! 

I had the perfect combo available from my stash too. A couple of years ago my dad brought me some gorgeous turquoise raw silk back from a holiday to India. I had been afraid to use it on something that I didn't think was special enough or on a pattern I hadn't tested (muslins are not my thing). Enter the bhl Anna dress that I have made a couple of times before and so know what adjustments need to be made. 

Like a number of people I had found that the back gaped on my original version so I followed Sonja's tutorial for adjusting the back, it worked like a charm. 

The silk was slightly rough in texture so did not slide around at all when cutting or seeing. It was a dream to sew up and it pressed well however it wrinkles like crazy so I am actually going to have to pull out my iron when I want to wear this dress. I lined the whole thing in a turquoise rayon from my stash. I'd bought it from fabricsforsale to make a top but when it arrived I found the colour a bit too strong to want to wear and also when I prewashed it, the colour leaked badly so into the stash it went for just such a project as this-perfect! 

For some reason I kept putting off making this dress, sometimes I get wierd blocks about stuff so it ended up being a bit of a rush to get it finished. Not ideal when there was much hand sewing to be done! I hand stitched the lining to the zip and hand sewed the entire hem! I cannot tell you how much I hate hand stitching my clothes (which is wierd as I enjoy it on quilts etc). Needless to say the lining was machine hemmed. 

I'm so pleased with the final result and had so many compliments on it at my party!  I felt so comfortable in it and I can see it getting many more wears for the rounds of weddings and birthday parties that my friends are having. Apparently this dress has magical powers too, I can go on looking elegant in it even when very much the worse for wear!