Oh, hello there!

It’s embarrassing how long it took me to write up a post this time! I have to blame a whole new bunch of hobbies for it. I’ve discovered wool spinning and all that comes with it and have spent the last couple months pretty much doing nothing else than handling wool in all shapes and forms. It’s really fun and distracts me from sewing at the moment. I’ve been making all sorts of little projects for the kids in my family, as well. So I’ve been very much involved with all things creative. People ask me all the time how I have the time to do so many things at once and, well, I haven’t. I really have to make time to be able to explore so many creative activities and some things have to get pushed to the bottom of the list. In the last few months it’s been mostly working out (the most likely candidate) and blogging. Preparing a blog post eats up a lot of time and, to be honest, isn’t always the most creative part of the process for me.

Just before discovering the joy of old spindles and raw fibres I finished a couple of really cute outfits which we photographed months ago. One of these was this really lovely jersey dress, which I’ve worn endlessly since then.

pattern: hacked Agnes Top (Tilly and the Buttons), size 10
fabric: 1.5m of printed jersey (gifted)
cost: next to nothing: fabric was gifted, 10cm elastic (1.99€/m),  matching thread from my stash
duration: ~2 hours

I used the Agnes Top pattern by Tilly and the Buttons and lengthened it into a dress. It’s the third time I made myself an Agnes dress, the other two dresses (here and here) are some of my favourite garments to date. It’s fairly easy to do this freehand. I usually use the Sew Over It Cowl Neck Dress as a base for the skirt part, since I really like the fit and length. As I said, you don’t necessarily need a skirt pattern for this. You could simply drop the hem down to knee-length and curve the side seams a bit following the shape of your thighs. 

An Agnes dress is super comfy, but doesn’t look too slouchy. You can easily dress it up with some heels or dress it down by wearing trainers. It’s also one of my favourite garments to take on holidays, as it’s such an allrounder and fits easily in any bag without creasing. 

I love the feminine shape of the neckline. It’s such a simple, but effective trick to use a short length of elastic to ruche the centre front and turn it from a scoop neck into a pretty v-shape. This technique is included in the pattern booklet and can also be easily applied to other garments. You could also use this trick on other tops you would like to update. Any scoop neck would be perfect for this. The elastic is stitched down with a zigzag stitch, which only takes a minute or two.

I would really love to get my sewing juices flowing again! I’ve been browsing a bit for new indie sewing patterns and bought a couple Sew Over It dress patterns recently. I would really like to explore other brands as well, since I feel I’ve been missing out on all the latest pattern crazes (Myosotis Dress anyone? I’ve been eyeballing you!).

Do you have any recommendations for patterns and indie pattern designers which I should check out? Please let me know in the comments!

xx

Charlie

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Happy sewing!
♥

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