Flower Power with Mood's Nile Green and Black Cotton Floral

Can you believe it. July hurried by without much notice. It's been unusually cool for the month of July. We've had temperatures in the upper 70's by day and by night as low as 55 degrees. I had hoped for a much warmer summer after our Siberia winter. But instead we've only had a few hot weeks where the temps were above 90.



My plans were to sew as many summer dresses before the return of the polar vortex. The good thing is it not to cool for the summer dress production to continue. Last week I finished my August Mood project and it has all the essence of a summer garden party frock. Like many of the other network bloggers, I routinely check the new arrivals to scope out the new pretties before they vanish. As I was scrolling through the many swatches, I saw this lovely Nile green and black cotton floral print. It's beautiful and has several colors of my color palette. This soft semi-sheer cotton is slightly heavier than voile and it has a glossy finish similar to sateen. This summery print works well with Mood's white cotton voile, which I used to line this dress.

For this dress I used the bodice of Butterick 4443-F and the skirt of Vogue 8555-F. Both used in previous projects. Often I like to play around with mixing and matching bodices and skirts of different dress patterns.

The bodice is size 14 modified with my standard adjustments plus a little extra at the side seams.

For the skirt (size 14) I only added about an inch to the length and made adjusted the back and side pleats. The bodice from B4443 is my favorite out of the three included in the pattern. The pleated skirt from Vogue 8555 was a great alternative and provided an opportunity for different full skirt silhouette.

Pictures are really worth a thousand words. I had not noticed that the sleeve was slightly higher in the front than in the back until I looked at the pictures last Friday. They were set as stated in the guide sheet, but after my adjustments, I needed to lower the front about a half inch. This is an easy fix that I will address this week. Everything is fine.

The skirt has a pleat on each side. I did not like the suggested method for making them. So I attached the pocket pieces to the front and back skirt. Then sew the front and back skirt together. Lastly, I formed the pleat (without stitching) then attached the bodice to the skirt.

The entire dress is lined with white cotton voile. I added lace to the hem of the skirt lining and stitched a 1.5 inch hem in the skirt. I hand pitched a regular zipper adding seed beads along the stitching line. I think because this fabric is so light and smooth, zipper installation was not as easy as it has been in the past with using this technique. So I have a little zipper exposure.

All in all I really like my new dress. I wore it to lunch with a few of my sewing lady friends at the Zodiac Room in Nieman Marcus on Thursday. Throughout the day, I received a quite a few compliments. Shh.., they did not know the sleeves were slightly off kilter. ;-)

I will probably use both patterns again. They have the essential elements for a nice skirt waist dress.

Happy Sewing!
C