Cressoway! (Dallida?)

It’s time for a mash up! Yeah yeah!!

Back in September, I made a dress for Sewing Indie Month using two Jennifer Lauren Vintage patterns – the Dalloway dress and the Cressida skirt. I combined the bodice of the Dalloway with the Cressida skirt to make a cute vintage styled fit-and-flare dress. (And I put together a tutorial on how to do it on Jennifer’s blog. Spoiler alert: it’s a super easy pattern hack.)

This was my first time making any Jennifer Lauren Vintage patterns, and I have to say, it was a lovely experience! Great instructions, good diagrams, notches that all match up and do what they’re meant to do, and a clean and easy way to line a bodice. I now have my eye on her Enid top pattern to add to my “things to sew” list… 😉

Jennifer drafts for a D-cup bodice, and I’m an AA, so naturally there had to be a bit of adjusting before I could begin. I chose my size based on high bust measurements then did a 3″ SBA (small bust adjustment) to bring it down to an A cup. Since there were two waist darts, I rotated them into one dart and then did a SBA on the bodice to make it easier. The SBA resulted in the side bust darts and one of the waist darts on the bodice being removed. (A shame, as I really like the double waist dart detail in the Dalloway bodice. But hey, if I’d kept them both, they would have been little more than pintucks. 😉

Here’s my hacked-up bodice post-SBA….

I also added 1cm of length to the front and back bodice (a common adjustment for me, due to my height.)

Fit adjustments made to the bodice, I started asjusting the Cressida skirt to convert it from a separate with button front opening to a dress skirt with centre back zip. You can find all of these over on the Jennifer Lauren Vintage blog, so I won’t go into the details here as well. (Although if you have any questions, feel free to ask.)

The other key change I made was leaving out the pockets. (Yes, yes, I know – that decision just seems downright wrong! But there’s a good reason for it – I wanted to leave it easy to take this in at the waist in the future, and the pockets would have made it very hard to do that. So they got left out, and the side seams got stitched up last, rather than the waist seam.)

I really love the resulting dress – it’s fun and swirly! The Cressida skirt is a semi-circle, which gives a good amount of fullness while not being too nervous about errant breezes (a common wardrobe malfunction here in Wellington. Wonder why wind gets mentioned on Wellington sewing blogs a lot? We’ve just officially been announced the windiest city in the world. Yeah.). I like how the neckline on the Dalloway dips down at the back, and how the bodice is fully lined in an easy and clean way. The combination of patterns results in a dress that’s a good blank canvas for all sorts of fun prints and patterns.

Speaking of prints and patterns – the fabric I used for this came from Fabric-a-brac a while ago. It’s a cotton, with a lovely mottled pink design all over it. I paired it with a lightweight yellow poplin for the bodice lining, and used yellow Hug Snug to bind all the seams. The hem is finished with Hug Snug and stitched with a blind machine stitch.

One thing you may spot that’s a bit odd – the zipper is a super crazy long one. I got given a bunch of these a while back, and it turned out I didn’t have any suitable coloured zips the right length in my stash (considering how many zips I own, I have no idea how this could have happened…). For some reason, I decided that rather than shortening the zip, I’d just make a super long lapped zip. And no, there was no good reason for this decision – I just felt like it. *shrug* So yes, this dress has a lapped zip that goes nearly the whole way down the back. (Can you spot where it ends in the photo below? Please ‘scuse the wrinkles – this dress had already been through High Tea and lots of walking and sitting.)

The photos for this were taken at the house of one of my fellow members Wellington Sewing Bloggers Network (WSBN), after we went for high tea. We all had outfits to photograph – so much fun when we’re all getting garment photos and egging each other on! 😉 Just for fun, here’s a few behind-the-scenes photos. Including swinging. Because, swings.

Taking photos of Mel in one of her new dresses. 😉

Mel and Nina in new dresses!

We spotted this on the way to Nina’s house for photos – isn’t is amazing? All covered in wooden lace work, including the fence out the front.