This is a story where the moral is, “You can do it!” I made a lot of mistakes making this dress and I had to put it in timeout more than once to regain the spark for making it, but it actually turned out even better than I hoped and I think the final dress is more what I hoped for than my original plan.

Andrea is power posing with hands on hips in a dress with a fitted blue silk bodice and black silk skirt. The bodice is high necked with short, narrow straps, emphasizing her shoulders. The skirt flares from under the ribs. The bodice and skirt meet in a triangle below the bust.

First the sewing details if that’s what you’re here for:

Pattern: Acton from In the Folds. I heartily recommend this pattern! All of my drama making it was my own. The pattern was great and they even have some helpful tutorials on their website. I made the View A skirt with the View B back bodice in size B at the bust blended to size D at the hips. (My bust is 31”, waist is 26.5”, and my hips are 38.75”.)
Fabric
- The shiny blue is leftover from a gown I made for my sister’s wedding (which I’ll share after the wedding. I knit a shawl to go with it and that’s going to be a pattern, so stay tuned!) It’s silk charmeuse from Mood. I had just enough to make a whole dress, including the bodice and skirt, which was my plan when I set out. But that didn’t quite work out.
- The black is silk crepe that I bought from Fancy Tiger on a whim ages ago. I actually randomly and without a plan or being super sure what crepe is like, bought four metres of it online and I don’t regret it! This is your permission to buy random fabric just because you want to! I used a good deal of it to line the gown I’m wearing to my sister’s wedding (which feels so nice!), some for a facing for an Ogden tank, and the rest of it saved the day on this project when I made a mistake with my blue silk.

Now to the saga

I planned to make an all-blue version of this dress and, after making a muslin of the bodice and modifying it to fit my A cup bust (it’s drafted for a B), I cut all the pieces out and set them in a neat pile. I managed to sew with the silk without much trouble, which seems amazing to me. But thanks to my sister requesting that I sew her some Edwardian drawers and corset cover out of silk charmeuse, I now know that it’s really not nearly as challenging as I expected. (Yes, I made Edwardian drawers! Yes, they are lacy and wonderful. My sister is a much better sewist than I am and could have made them herself, but she gave me the gift of sewing with some lush materials and creating something special for her. Sewing for her wedding has made me so much better at it!)

Then I got to putting the skirt together. I pinned one side happily and then went to pin the other side. My friends, I had cut the two skirt backs exactly the same. I managed to do this because the silk is so slippery that I’d cut it in a single layer and failed to flip over the pattern piece the second time I cut it out. The charmeuse is very much not the same on the right and wrong side and my hopes for a blue silk dress were dashed. And I’d pretty much ruined the silk for anything else because the skirt pieces were just two narrow strips. This was the first timeout for this project. I think after setting this aside I made some Winslow Culottes and an Ogden tank that actually worked beautifully. Palette cleansed.

A back view of Andrea’s blue and black silk dress. She’s got one hand on a hip and the dress has a racerback vibe with an invisible zip.

I really wanted to make this pattern, so I looked through my stash to figure out what I could do to salvage the project. Black silk crepe to the rescue! The crepe, though, is just sheer enough that I would need to layer something underneath. The pattern only calls for the bodice to be lined, but I needed to line the skirt too. Of course I didn’t have enough of the black left for that, but I did have a blue skirt already cut out, just with one panel backwards. Perfect! I was back on track. I’d still get my blue silk dress, just with the blue skirt hidden underneath with a mistake that would make it feel special. So I sewed the skirts together and started attaching the first one to the bodice. (They have great instructions for doing this neatly in the pattern!)

But the bodice and skirt didn’t fit together. The way I’d modified the bodice took width out of it so the skirt pieces were now too wide. With all my genius bodice modifying, I’d forgotten to modify the skirt too. (You’d be right to say I could have saved myself this trouble if I’d made a muslin of the whole dress and not just the bodice. Lesson learned.) I lost the energy to keep going, so I put the whole thing in time out again.

But I really wanted this dress! This is the kind of style that I would never be able to buy. RTW dresses are almost always a disappointment because my boobs are smaller than “average” in comparison to my waist and my hips are far bigger in comparison to both. If the bodice and waist both have to fit closely, I’m pretty much out of luck. Being thin, I know I have it way easier when it comes to shopping than a lot of people, but the ability to make clothes that actually celebrate my body as it is makes me feel very powerful! I hope you can get that feeling from making your own clothes too! Plus, the silk was so pretty, I couldn’t bear to just let it go to waste.

So I had a look at the pattern and realized I could probably make it work by just cutting some of the width from the tops of the front skirt pieces at the sides. Of course, I first had to rip out the seams I’d done on two silk skirts, the main and the lining, which was very boring and irritating.

But I did it! And the rest of the project went smoothly. I tried the dress on inside out to see what it would have looked like in all-blue and while it’s really pretty, it gives off a distinct nightgown feel. I like the blue/black vibe much better — kind of Star Trek or superhero?

One thing I’ve discovered about my personal style is that I really love shoulder-emphasizing looks — racerbacks, spaghetti straps, and muscle tanks are what I’m really into right now. I think I enjoy the juxtaposition of feminine with strong arms and back. So this elegant silk dress that just shows off my arms is perfect!

I was very inspired by the version of this dress by Stitching in Space and directly copied their bra cup hack — I sewed some foam cups into the lining through the princess seams and it works great! (It was quite a bit of drama to get them placed properly though. I think I sewed them three times before I was happy and attaching them was fiddly because I waited until the rest of the dress was done to do it. I think that was a good idea because it helped me get the fit just right, but it was a bad idea because it was so hard to pin them in.)

All things considered, I’m really proud of this project. Now that I’m looking at the pictures, I can’t stop focusing on the little drag lines above the bust at the princess seams, but the fit is so close to perfect and I think no one but me and maybe other sewists who pay a lot of attention to this stuff would ever notice. And like I said, I couldn’t buy a dress that fit me this well in this style.

Side view of Andrea in her blue and black dress. The skirt slopes from a point just below the centre bust to be lower at the back.

I haven’t quite decided on shoes to go with this dress, but I think I’m actually going to pull out some very tall black Docs that I wore for my wedding so many years ago and maybe add some black leggings. Unlike my clothing wardrobe, which is vast, I never really got on the shoe collecting train. Like a proper Canadian, I mostly wear my Blundstones during cooler weather and some Berkenstock sandals in warmer weather, but I do also have some Duckfeet (brown boots) that I love and a pair of Doc Marten mary janes that I’ve probably had for twenty years. I was originally thinking I’d choose one of those, but looking at these pictures, I’m not so sure.

And of course being a knitter first, I added my Goldstream shawl for a little warmth and I think it’s super pretty.

Happy Me Made May! Go try again with that project that’s be eluding you!

Here’s a previous Me Made May post if you like seeing what I’m wearing.

Me Made May: A Dress Saga

First the sewing details if that’s what you’re here for:

Now to the saga

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