Beach Cover Up

A lovely day at the English seaside!

My wardrobe has not really needed a beach cover up, but I am a sucker for new sewing projects, so I kept my eye out for some cotton lace fabric and this one spoke to me when I was in Canada, at Fabricana.

It was sold in a tube, the fabric was manufactured in the round, so I decided to use that to my advantage when making the garment.

I bought a length of 85cm, and a burn test tells me that it is cotton. It has a very stiff hand and hasn't softened with washing. I would prefer if it had a bit more drape. It is also a little too bulky and heavy to be a really convenient beach cover up.

To make up, I sewed the shoulder seams together, by hand, along an angle. Then I trimmed off the excess to a very small seam allowance. The fabric doesn't fray. Then I snipped along the eyelets down the sides to create an armhole. The front slashed neckline was too high, so rather than trim it down, I folded it down and stitched it so that it forms a facing on the front neckline. I quite like the extra thickness there, and it is handy to have a quick way of telling the front from the back. I threaded cotton cording through the eyelets for the belt tie. That actually took some time, because the eyelets don't run straight around the tube in a circle. I was going a bit wonky and had to work out how to keep it level while still looking like I was going though a proper row.

I think it is not quite finished. I really should stitch a hem around each armhole, and possibly the hem. Because it is all hand sewing, it makes a good travel project to finish up when I really miss stitching.

But not on the Isle of Wight.

Costs:
Fabric: £6.85
Cording: 44p
Total: £7.29

Sleeveless Peony Dress

How many floral dresses does my wardrobe need? Quite a few, apparently.

This fabric has been on a long journey, and, guess what? I am so pleased to be wearing it as a dress, instead of having it tucked away in my stash. Ironic, that we like a fabric so much that we are afraid to do it justice, so we don't use it, but we don't get to look at it either. Although I am slightly envious of those with sewing rooms who can store their stash in a shelving system, with bolts of fabric wrapped around cardboard cores. But I digress.

Back to the fabric. Many years ago now, Marie from A Stitching Odyssey sewed and blogged a lovely Elisalex dress. When she had a de-stash and mentioned that she was selling 3m of the same fabric, I wanted it! I'm ashamed to say that I wanted it to make my own Elisalex. How terrible of me! But Marie was sweet enough to sell it to me anyway. I adore the colours, the creamy-beige background is not a colour that suits me terribly well, but the blues and the pops of dark pink are absolutely "my colours".

It is an upholstery fabric, apparently from the USA, and mentions Teflon in the selvedge. The fabric has some sort of coating on it which gives it a sheen, but it seemed to wash off. It is actually pretty lightweight for an upholstery fabric. It feels not much heavier than a quilting cotton to me, and behaves the same.

After I came to my senses, and realised what a sewing no-no it would be to make an Elisalex, I sat with the fabric for... oh, about 3 years. I decided to make a coat with it, instead of a dress.

Well, the coat is actually almost finished, but probably quite far from making it to the blog, so with summer here, I eked out a dress from the remaining 1m using the Colette Peony pattern.

I have made the Peony once before, but since realised that this pattern was crying out to be made in a super-sized floral. Well, those flowers couldn't be any bigger and still fit on a dress. Yes, it is a loud, statement dress, but I work in horseracing, so raceday dressing is pretty normal for me.

I didn't have enough fabric to add sleeves so I checked a couple of blogs to confirm that alterations are usually done by binding the armholes. I adjusted the pattern to take a lot off the tops of the shoulders and the front neckline. I'm delighted to report that, although the shoulder seams are very small, they hit exactly where my bra strap goes and there is never a strap peeking out.

I was taking a big risk with my coat, that nothing would go wrong. The coat pieces were cut out, but I used up every last scrap in this dress. So much so, that I cut the facing, the sleeve bindings and the pocket bags from, what else, a blue shirt!

I really wanted to add pockets. The skirt has enough fullness that they don't spoil the line of the side seams, but I didn't have enough fabric to cut even one side of the pocket bag. However,  I did have enough strips to add a tiny edging to the pocket bag. This isn't pieced, I cut a full pocket from the facing fabric, as much width as I could from the fashion fabric, and just folded in the raw edge and topstitched it to the inside fabric. The finished pocket looks great, even if my phone weighs too much to be carried easily in it.

I also got to use my new overlocker to finish the seam allowances. I overlocked the side seams, the pocket edges and the facing edges, and I am very pleased with how they look. I was a little surprised though, that my iron melted the overlocking thread when I was pressing the seams open. I'm not co-ordinated enough to use a pressing cloth to press open seam allowances, and besides, I was pressing an adjacent seam, not the overlocked ones, they just happened to end up under the iron.

The melting was a bit of a problem, because it made a scratchy, plastic blob on the insides of my dress. I covered it with a piece of hemming lace, in the method of a Hong Kong seam finish, but that defeats the purpose of overlocking as a seam finish. (But imagine the decadence of lace Hong Kong seams in all my dresses!)

I used an old gifted/thrifted zip, lapped with the help of Lauren's tutorial. It is not perfect, showing at the bottom, and at the waistline, but it is pretty near perfect at the top, completely hiding the old zip in a not quite right colour.

I cut the skirt length to the pattern pieces this time. I have shortened my previous Peony, and like it much better. Such a large scale print is better in a smaller dress. I might even hem it shorter still.  I used my lovely lace as a hem facing, and hand stitched it down.

Costs: 
 Fabric: £9
 Lining/facing fabric: £0
 Pattern: £0
 Thread: £0
 Notions: zip £0, lace £1
Total: £10