Tales of Orsola -The Dress Challenge

Hello Everyone!

I’m Bianca, hail from southern Germany and blog over at www.sleeplessinbavaria.com. After years of following this blog and being inspired by all of you talented ladies, I have finally bitten the bullet and decided to participate in the Indie Pattern Month, for the first time!

Let’s dig in: For the first challenge, coincidently the Dress Challenge, I decide to make up the new dress from Indie Pattern Designers By Hand London – The Orsola Dress. So far, I’ve only ever made their Anna Dress which I love. What attracted me to the dress was the fact that there are no closures, yep NO BUTTONS OR ZIPS!!! YAS!!!

I love, love, love the low back detail and the scalloped hem of Dress Variation 2, which is why I chose to sew it up. I used 2.9m of white linen, as I really wanted a little white dress in my closet for the past two summers, and sewed up a straight size 10. I chose to go with the finished garment measurements, as I was worried, the back would gape and look really unfortunate, if I went with the size of my measurements, this was definitely the right decision.

I made a quick muslin of the bodice to determine, whether I needed to play with the fit and decided to lengthen the bodice by one inch, I think I did the same for the Anna Dress eons ago, as well.  The construction of the dress is BRILLIANT!!!! Instead of faffing about with facings, you line the bodice, I used the same fabric as the shell which gives the dress a very polished finish. All the notches match and the way you are meant to sew the bodice, the waistband/ waist ties and skirt together leaves the dress looking incredibly neat and professional on the inside.  I do recommend using stay tape on the back bodice pieces to avoid them stretching out, you could also use ribbon or something similar with no stretch.

As for the skirt, instead of hemming it with bias binding, the ladies of BHL constructed a facing which once again gives the dress a very clean and professional finish. I’m not going to lie, this dress has the nicest insides of all of the garments I have ever made. I now want to draft skirt facings for all my dresses (I hate having to draft anything…)

The only thing I had to fix, after I tried on the finished dress, was the length of my straps,  I’m not sure what happened but the darts were suddenly closer to my belly button than they should have been (!!!) and made my chest look sad and droopy (YIKES!!!)…I think between me adding an extra inch to the bodice and the weight of the skirt, the dress decided to have a good laugh at me. Once I shortened the straps by 1.5 inch, I was really happy with the fit!

I really love my finished dress and think I will make another in black linen as well, as I am in dire need of a Little Black Dress. The ladies from By Hand London really knocked the ball out of the park with this dress and I can wholeheartedly recommend the pattern.