Olivia Wrap Dress

 

• Since this is the New to You Challenge I decided to go with one of the patterns from the Chill Out Capsule and since it’s winter here the Olivia Wrap Dress appealed.  I don’t have a wrap dress at the moment and I had the perfect fabric in my stash, so that was another point in its favour.
• The fabric was some merino/nylon from Levana Textiles bought off Trademe and in a perfect colour for me.
• The pattern was mostly good, the fit is good for me with no adjustments but I would do the pockets differently in future.  They are inset after the side seams are sewn, normally I put them in before that and the result would have been much smoother that way.  I stuffed up a little and cut the fronts out with the wrong side of the fabric so had to change which side the dress fastens to fix that as I didn’t have enough fabric to recut.  I also changed how the elastic in the waist was sewn in and just sewed it over the seam and through the dress rather than attaching it to the seam allowance; what can I say, I’m lazy and I figured it’ll be covered by the ties anyway.  Finally I made the opening for the ties smaller after seeing comments about that being too large on Pattern Review.
• I’m actually surprised at just how much I like this now that I’ve finished it and I think it’s going to be a staple in my winter wardrobe.  It fits well and is flattering too.  I want to wear it with my Caterpillar boots for some reason, and if it gets super cold I’ll wear a shawl to fill in the neckline.
• My blog is Warming Crafts and will shortly have more details on this dress; I did this blogpost first though!