Hello! I am excited to be taking part in the Itch to Stitch Holiday Blog Tour! This tour was put together by two inspiring seamstresses and bloggers Fleurine from Sew MarieFleur and Leslie from ThreadBear Garments. I have admired many of the patterns from Itch to Stitch for a while, but until this tour my only experience in sewing one was the sample of the Emily Culottes for the Indiesew shop. I was happy to finally get to try one for myself.
I decided to try the Idyllwild dress since I’ve really been wanting to make myself a knit dress along the lines of the awesome dresses from Sonnet James. I consulted with Michelle from Style Maker Fabrics, who was graciously supplying fabrics for the tour, and she suggested that I use this metallic twill weave ponte for my dress. The fabric is a nice heavy weight that I thought would be great for a more fitted dress. It’s really sparkly and festive– perfect for the holiday season!
This would have been a really quick sew, but I ran into some issues with fitting that took me a bit longer to (sort of) work out. I had a lot of pooling in my lower back and spent some time trying to adjust the back piece to minimize the pooling. The fabric requirements for the dress were generous so I was able to cut the back piece twice after doing a pretty major swayback adjustment. I still have some pooling in the lower back that I wasn’t able to completely fix. I think if I’d gone for a little bit looser fit maybe the pooling would have gone away, but I felt like this weight of fabric looked better when I made the dress more fitted.
I decided to finish the neck with a neck binding instead of the neckband included in the pattern. The binding worked really well and I think it looks a smidge fancier in my sparkly fabric. My coverstitch machine absolutely loved sewing this ponte, which was a pleasant surprise. I feel like I want to buy all the ponte now that I know how easy it was to sew!
Initially I figured I would wear this dress with black tights and heels but when I was reviewing the photos I felt like something was missing. The camera isn’t accurately capturing the fun sparkles on the fabric, and I felt like it really needed something. I was wishing for some accessories like a statement necklace or a thin belt. Then realized that I should just style it in a more Teri way. I threw on my jean jacket, changed into my boots instead of the shoes I couldn’t walk in, and added a flannel scarf (which is actually a fabric scrap that obviously needs to become a cowl!) I feel so much more comfortable and like myself this way! I am excited to wear this dress this season because it’s like glittery secret pajamas, which is really what we all need, right?!
As part of the tour Itch to Stitch patterns is offering 16% off patterns with the code Holiday16. Style Maker Fabrics is offering $5 shipping on all fabric (no code needed) and there is also a discount on international shipping.
Thank you so much to Kennis for supplying the Idyllwild pattern, to Style Maker Fabrics for supplying the fabric, and to Fleurine and Leslie for asking me to be a part of the tour! Be sure to check out the rest of the tour this week– I’ve seen some amazing sneak peeks from some of the other participants that have me wanting to squeeze in some more holiday sewing!
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~Teri
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