More Felicias

I thought I would get ahead a bit and start writing an end-of-year summary post, but found three draft posts which I wrote back in August so, with a bit of updating, here's the first.

The first dress here is sewn with a turquoise linen which I bought from Bloomsbury Square (although they call this colourway Cornflower Blue) a few years ago.  At 260 gsm it's a heavier weight than I've used for other dresses, but it does hang, and swish, beautifully and I would definitely use it again.

The next is a long-sleeved version made from some cotton gingham which I bought from Minerva several years ago now.  The sleeved version of this pattern is available as a separate expansion pack - it's not just sleeve pieces, the bodice is cut differently too.  I bought this when it was first released and this is the first time I've used it!  It was easy to make - the sleeves fit very nicely into the armholes, I did have to shorten them though.

All the others are linen which I bought from a trip to Rye in the summer which obviously had to include visiting Merchant & Mills.  I spent quite a while in there narrowing down what I wanted to buy and this is what came home with me.

Of these linens all have now been turned into dresses except for the blue and white check which I will sew up in the spring, and the brown and white check on the top of the pile which was a remnant and will become either a top or skirt, once I've decided which!

So, here are the four Felicias which I've made from this recent purchase

French Clay - a lovely beigy putty-ish colour, with a slight pink tinge to it

Boston Fall - gorgeous, but although when I prewashed it with the other linen purchases there was no problem, the first time I put it in the machine with a mixed cotton / synthetic load, all the pale synthetic fabrics picked up loose dye from it and went a rather fetching (not) shade of sludgy yellow.  The clothes made from linen and 100% cotton were fine.  So now I'm only washing it with non-synthetic things.

Cinnamon Dust - a gorgeous colour and perfectly matched with my Ember cardigan.

And finally a long-sleeved version in Sophia Plum - a lovely aubergine colour with an ochre yellow grid pattern, which is a slightly lighter weight than the plain colours.

I've put the turquoise dress away now for next summer, and passed on the pink gingham one, but all the others are going to get plenty of wear over the autumn and winter.

Tessuti Mattea dress & top

I bought this pattern at the Stitch Festival in London earlier this year and last month I made the top version, to see how the sizing worked.

I cut a size 1 and the fit was fine.  I used some leftover fabric from a Vogue repro vintage dress (V-8728) that I made back in 2013 and it came together pretty quickly.  I followed the pattern instructions as written for this one.

Fast forward a few weeks and I've just finished the dress.  This time I made a few changes - I took out the centre back seam and cut the back bodice in one piece; I didn't use stitch & tear interfacing on the neckline and armholes, I staystitched them instead; I also bound the armholes on the inside rather than the outside and I made pocket bags, not the 'attached to the front bodice' version in the pattern.  I used some linen which I've had in my stash for a while and it took 1.9m.  It would probably have needed more if I'd cut bias binding for the armholes from it, but I used commercial binding instead.

I traced a size 2 skirt, (can't really remember why now... but might have been because it fitted better on the dot and cross paper that I used for tracing).  I haven't top stitched the neckline - I'll see how it wears without it, should be OK because the facing is understitched and also tacked in place on the shoulder seams.  I'm going to make more of these, and if they're in linen I shan't bother to interface the neckline facing - even with using very thin interfacing it feels quite bulky.  The fabric I used for the top was a lot thinner so the interfacing was fine with that.  Now, what shall I make next?

Coral linen Lisa

This is another pattern I'd been meaning to make for a while and the me-made May challenge spurred me on to get it done!

This is a made from coral linen which I bought from Fabrics Galore.  I did cheat a bit - I sewed the two bodice fronts together (I did check whether it would go over my head first) because I wasn't sure whether I'd have enough thread for the buttonholes - all the top stitching used a lot of thread - which was by Coats.  I went to the local shop where I'd originally bought it and discovered they'd closed down in January, and the only other shop local to me which has a haberdashery only sells Gutermann thread. 

The buttons I bought a few years ago in Jenners in Edinburgh and were originally intended for a cardigan, but I ended up using different ones.  They are an exact colour match for this fabric.

It was a challenge to do all the top-stitching and keep it straight and parallel, but I do like the finished look.

Pineapple Felicia

My second dress completed in May is this one.  It started life back in 2014 as a Butterick 5748 bodice / Simplicity 2444 skirt mash-up, but the bodice had got too tight in the intervening years.

I love the print and had about a metre of the fabric left after making the original dress, so I unpicked and removed the bodice and zip from the skirt, which I reused - I pressed out the pleats and gathered it.  I cut a Tessuti Felicia bodice (I'd already made a Felicia last year) and then with the remaining fabric cut two equal widths to make a frill for the bottom of the skirt.

I'm so pleased that this dress now has a new lease of life!