Made by Me: Dress Cezembre

First things first...  as you can see, I've given the blog a little makeover.  What do you think?  I'm really pleased with it, I've been wanting to do it for ages but wasn't sure exactly what I wanted.  I found this theme ready made on Etsy, it was really cheap and the seller was super helpful with a couple of queries I had.  I even managed to install it myself AND I made the new logo myself as well.   

I also made this dress.

The dress is based on the Blouse Cezembre pattern by Anne Kerdiles Couture.  I have actually made it as a blouse as well, which is yet to be blogged, and as soon as I tried on the finished blouse I knew I wanted a dress version.

I love the way the hem is shorter at the front than the back, and that the change in length happens towards the front rather than at the side seams.  This is achieved by not having side seams in the pattern.  The back piece wraps around to the front princess seam line, so it is really wide, and the front piece is very narrow.  It looks weird when you cut it out, but great when it's made up. 

The pattern suggests you use crepe, viscose or light cotton and for my blouse version I used the remains of the cotton/viscose plaid fabric from this dress.

For this version I went totally off piste and used ponte roma fabric from Fabric HQ, sadly I can't find it on their website to share it with you.  It wasn't the cheapest fabric ever, I think about £20 a metre, but I bought it on their birthday celebrations and got 20% off.  I managed to get this dress out of 1.5 metres.

You'll notice I've added pockets.  I really wanted this to be a cosy dress with pockets - not sure that I'll ever use them, but they had to be there.  And I didn't want inseam pockets either. 

I actually added a side seam to the pattern as well as adding around 12 inches in length by slashing the pattern at hip level.  The narrow side section between the new side seam and the princess seam I lengthened a further 12 inches and folded this up to create a deep pocket.  With the patterned fabric you can't really see that the pockets are there, but I know they are, which is all that matters.

I also lengthened the sleeves, basically making them as long as my available fabric would allow, and they're lovely and cosy.  I put a deep hem facing on them so if I wanted to I could turn them back a bit. 

Instead of a facing for the neckline I used a band of fabric, and for I think the first time ever, got the right length first time!

I took a bit of a risk with this as I didn't make a toile first - I didn't have enough of another ponte roma to do so - so I did risk ruining this lovely fabric, but thankfully this has turned out exactly as I imagined it.  I want to wear it all the time and if I didn't have so many other things on my "to sew" list I'd probably have made another one already!