L-O-L-A Lola Dress

This is the very first time I have entered an Indie Pattern Month contest. This pattern was bought as part of pattern bundle in IPM 2017 and printed but not even stuck together until this week. Its the Oki Style Lola pattern ( hence my title) and is described on the Oki website as the “deformed dress” presumably because of the very unusual sleeves.

I always fancied making this but never got round to it. As it turns out its a relatively straight forward design – basically a raglan with front darts. Mind you I have changed a couple of things to make it work with what materials I have available. The fabric is a stretch woven of unknown fibre content.

My pattern changes are:

1) I omitted the back zip. Reasons for this are my fabric is stretchy. I used the same fabric previously to make black work trousers and they do have zips but I rarely bother to undo them because I do not need them to get the garments on and off – and I am lazy! This dress is made from the left over bits from the trousers. I had just enough fabric as it turns out.

2) I added a ribbed neck like a Tshirt neck – because it seems to work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) My cuffs ( Manchettes on the pattern which got me quite confused for a while and Google Translate called them Manchettes too) are also ribbed and do not fasten with a button as the pattern suggests. I simply did not need to make them opening. I cut about an inch off the cuff length to make them work without buttons.

4) The sleeve arm holes are edged with faux black leather to match the centre back strip rather than bias.

5)  I removed about 1 inch from the centre back and inserted a strip of faux leather because I like the back feature on the pattern but had decided to omit the zip so I get a similar overall look this way.

There is a relatively deep hem because otherwise this would have been a bit longer than I prefer to wear. Overlocked and twin needle stitched to allow for the fabric to stretch.

 

 Unfortunately the cuffs and neck edge are a bit (very!) creased but I happen to have already discovered this fabric melts easily so these were not pressed. Hopefully once this gets washed they will lose the creases.

So my end result is a LBD and I love it.  I wish I had made this at the start of summer instead of the start of winter because this is office worthy and the arm holes will probably make it very cool and comfortable for the hot weather.

The funniest bit about this is from the front its a very basic boring black dress but from the back its far more interesting with its deformed sleeves and the centre back decoration.

You can read more about this on my blog:

https://brackencrafts.blogspot.com/