Hi!

I made the Elisalex dress last week, and if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen me post about it yesterday

I managed to persuade my boyfriend to take these photos for me at lunchtime, so happily I can blog about this sooner than I expected. It really is tough taking decent photos during these winter months, I cannot wait for spring!

I have been meaning to try a By Hand London Pattern for ages. I love their aesthetic and they have such a brilliant collection of dress patterns I found it so hard to choose between them. It was between this and the Kim dress, the Elisalex won, but I still want both :).

I bought both the pattern and fabric from Backstitch . I’m a massive fan of backstitch, the quality is always spot on and delivery is super speedy. Here’s a link to the fabric used. This is actually the wrong side of the fabric, the right side was slightly darker, but I preferred the lighter colour as it was more of a grey tone, rather than denim blue. Although it looks quite blue in the pics it’s actually a light grey colour.

I lined it with a black poly lining as it was all I had in my fabric stash, thankfully it was a good colour combo, I love dresses with a contrasting lining fabric.

Construction was fairly straightforward. Winged princess seams are so beautiful and luckily I’ve been practicing them a lot lately as I have been experimenting with drafting different bodice styles using my block.

The fit is okay…unfortunately I was a bit lazy and ignored my usually required modifications, being 5’11” means patterns aren’t often drafted for a woman of my stature. I would usually always lengthen the bodice, sometimes the skirt and often require a full bust adjustment (FBA). I did make a toile and thought I could get away with no adjustments if I just sewed the shoulder and waist seams with a smaller seam allowance (0.5cm) to add a bit of extra length (2cm) to my bodice. However this “cheat” method didn’t quite work out. I think I could have lengthened the bodice more as the waist is sitting slightly higher than my natural waist. With regard to the FBA I think I should have done one, as I can see some slight drag lines around my armpits in these photos. It was a bit silly of me really, I think I have learned my lesson though and will be sure to make all those adjustments if I make this pattern again.

Enough moaning about fitting errors! I’m not going to pick this make apart as I still really like it and I think I will get a lot of wear out of it. The bodice style is really flattering, I love the neckline. At first I thought the volume of the skirt might be unflattering as I am slightly pear shaped, but having tried it on I think it’s lovely and it makes the dress feel more formal. I took 10cm off the length of the skirt as the longer length wasn’t flattering on me.

Overall I’m calling it a hit!

It’s funny, I don’t know how many of you have read the blog post about ablogogising by Did You Make That?, but I did and am now so aware of how negative I can be about my makes. I am therefore going to strive to be more positive in future, although I suppose it’s good to be a bit critical of yourself sometimes in order to improve.

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