Dress W

In October we started a wonderful sewing adventure called the 'Sewing Book Club' at Drygoods Design. With 8 people in the 'club' we meet once a month at the studio to work on dresses from the same book: Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish Dress Book. The wonderful thing about the book club is it is also basically an extended class (9 months!) where we work on making patterns fit ourselves. This includes making multiple muslin version...and for this dress book multiple are needed! Every dress is oversized, I measured a medium and ended up taking in the pattern less than the extra small. 

My first dress is W from the book. It's actually a shirt with a cape sleeve and a drawstring waist, but I took out the cape and extended the pattern to a dress length. I had to do about multiple fittings to get the pattern just right (which was very frustrating!), but finally it worked. 

The fabric I used is from a vintage night gown. It's this gorgeous light-weight cotton with a subtle flower wreath print. It's definitely a summer dress, but I wanted to make this one first just to figure out all the nuances of the pattern fitting process on an easy design. The fabric was such a pain to work with, but I like the final look. 

Now I need to convince Mom to finish hers!