Blue dress, blue skin

It's becoming harder and harder to drag myself away from lazing in my nice warm lounge room and head into my sewing room which probably explains why it took me a bit over two weeks to finish my latest dress. Instead I've been living vicariously through all of your blogs, especially those of you who have been sewing up pretty summer dresses - isn't it amazing how the prospect of warmth and sunshine gets our motivation going?

I too have made a nice sleeveless summer dress which is a little bit crazy since it's so cold around here, and will be for the next 2 or 3 months, but hey sewing on a whim is the best kind of think.  I sewed dress 130 from BWOF 2008-12, which is the exclusive design for that month's issue:

 The fabric suggestion for the bodice is for chiffon or like fabrics, which is typical outrageous Burda because even though the bodice is gathered it is also unlined, and I seriously doubt whether those gathers would give enough coverage for decency's sake! Plus the pattern as designed uses self fabric for bias binding around the neckline and armhole, which to me seems really fiddly and I would not have had the patience to do.  Instead I opted to make mine from a thin polished cotton in a navy blue diamond shape dot pattern for the bodice, a wool gabardine in navy blue for the skirt and fully lined the top and bottom with Bemberg lining.  All fabrics from the stash too which is a nice bonus.

I found the fit on this dress to be absolutely perfect with hardly any alterations, which is a relief because I threw caution to the wind and didn't bother with a muslin.  I cut a size 34 for the bodice and a size 38 for the skirt and deepened those darts as well as shaping the sides in order to get the two sizes to fit at the middle. And look at this side view, no swayback alteration and yet this fits like a glove:

Because I didn't use a thin fabric like chiffon for the bodice, I chose to use a series of pintucks at the front rather than gathers which I think looks just as good (please ignore that stray bit of fluff on the bodice in these photos - I didn't notice it until afterwards d'oh!).  Although I think it doesn't sit as flat along those vertical seam lines in the front as a soft flowing fabric would have since I used a crisp fabric, but it's not too bad:

However the back is also the interest point of this dress because instead of being the standard centre back zip from neckline to lower back, the zip extends to the top of the skirt only and the bodice instead buttons up at the neckline with a diagonal overlap like this:

I think I was overly worried about gaping there at the back and have put the buttons too far towards my shoulders and hence the strain lines that you can see.  But it's not too tight or uncomfortable so I think I'll leave it because if it does gape open then my bra strap at the back would be visible because the overlap isn't huge there.  But this is also probably the one dress where my poor posture is actually of benefit: because I tend to slump forward this helps the bodice at the back sit flat against my back!

Overall I'm really happy with this dress, even the length was just right for me too without having to shorten it.  The only problem with this dress is that I think I may have created an orphan because it's far too cold in my office all year round to wear it without a jacket, and the two navy suit jackets I have don't match it enough in terms of colour or texture.  I am trying to be less matchy matchy, but I'm afraid that I just can't stand wearing the same colour top and bottom if they don't match exactly - picky I know! I did wear it to work the day after I finished sewing it with one of the navy blue jackets from another skirt suit but it just didn't feel right - I felt frumpy and just wrong all day.

So I'm thinking I may either make a white jacket which would also go well with a few other dresses I have, or sacrifice this dress that I made ages ago and have only worn about three times since which is made from the same fabric (this dress is the leftovers of that dress) and then I can be happily matching.  Or since I'm a sewist with plenty of fabric and patterns at my fingerprints the answer may be to do both - all in good time of course.....