Hi all, hope everyone is staying safe and well during these crazy times. We are currently in lockdown here in the UK, only allowed out for essential journeys such as grocery shopping and collecting medicines and currently for 1 period of exercise a day.
All this extra time at home has given me plenty of time for sewing, I am currently awaiting some fabric so that I can get making some scrubs for our wonderful NHS but in the meantime I have just sewn myself a new dress. I love discovering new pattern companies and I recently came across a new to me company called Dhurata Davies, I started following them over on Instagram and when they put a 30% discount code up for their paper patterns (still running at time of writing) I couldn’t resist. I purchased 2 of their patterns – The Maxine Dress which is the one I will be showing you today and the Jasmine Dress and Tee which I hope to make in the very near future.
The Maxine dress is suitable for both knit and woven fabric and I have had this lovely ponte weight knit fabric in my stash for nearly 12 months. I purchased it from Sewisfaction when they held a pop up shop in Bath last May.
The Maxine Dress is a fairly straight forward sew if you follow the very clear instructions, I initially didn’t do this and steamed ahead like I knew what I was doing. The front is made up of panels that meet in the middle just under the bust line. The instructions tell you to join the right side panel to the top section and the left side panel to the bottom section and then it is fairly straight forward joining these two pieces together. I foolishly didn’t read these instructions and tried attaching the side panels to the top on both sides at which stage I realised it was going to be pretty difficult to get a neat centre point. Once I realised my mistake I had the lovely task of unpicking the entire front and starting over, I could of probably joined it all together without the unpicking but I don’t think it would of turned out nearly as neatly. So lesson learnt – READ THE INSTRUCTIONS – the pattern designer really does know best when it comes to making up their designs..
I went with my body measurements when cutting out but found it to be way too big once I had sewn up the side seams, I think that maybe because I used knit fabric I should of sized down. I overcame this problem my taking in the side seams by 1 inch. Once this was done I still found it a little big over the back area so I added some darts and then cut down the centre (deep breath) and rejoined with a 5/8″ seam allowance. I am not in the habit of sewing toiles but maybe this is something I should consider in the future.
The only other alteration I made was to take it up my a couple of inches – I am only 5ft 2″ so this is a regular alteration for me.
Anyway I am very happy with the end result and I love the fact that it has deep pockets on the front. Also as an added bonus I entered my dress in an Instragram competition being run by Sister Mintaka – #FeelingSewMuchBetter and was one of the lucky winners of a £25 gift voucher.
jennylovestosew 