This dress says summer to me. That hot, sticky part of summer where it's hard to believe it will really get cold again. This dress is so lightweight. The fabric is Liberty's Tana Lawn in two prints that make me think of my garden. The skirt is cut on the bias making for a close fit that still allows for movement (and feels perpetually crooked - the first half hour in a bias cut dress always involves a lot of shifting things around).

I made a few pretty basic mistakes with this dress: I didn't add enough seam allowance to the top of the back piece and had to zigzag and turn over the edge instead of doing a proper hem; and I completely failed to notice that the bodice pieces were supposed to be cut from a double thickness until after I'd sewn on the bias trim. I decided not to fix that. It was going to be too much bother to unpick all the bias trim and I'd always be wearing a bra under my dress anyway.

On that note though - I really need to get a strapless bra that has a more slippery texture. The Tana Lawn, while fantastic in every other respect, has a tendency to be very grabby towards other fabrics. In looser dresses is isn't such a big deal but in my closer fitting sundresses it pays to be wearing silkier under things. On a related note, I think this dress would make a remarkably pretty slip for wearing under other dresses. I'm thinking of some silk charmeuse and maybe a bit of lace along the hemline.

I had some trouble with the fit of the back of this dress. You can probably see the bit of gathering across the back from the elastic I put in initially to deal with things. I'm not sure if I stretched the top back of the dress when I was putting it together or if it was just too big but there seemed to be a lot of extra fabric between my hips and my shoulder blades. Even with the elastic there was no way to adjust the dress and not have a huge fold of fabric in the back. It was remarkably unflattering when you consider that the fit was near perfect through my hips. I ended up doing a bit of pin-fitting and then taking out the side seams part way and resewing them. I was a little surprised at how much fabric I removed from the upper back of my dress (about 4"/10cm - those are my sewing snips for scale) and I'm wondering if I drew out the wrong size or maybe even the wrong dress back when I copied the pattern pieces out of the book.

My fabric for March's dress should be arriving soon but I'm still waiting to hear if the shop has got a copy of the pattern I want to use. I can't believe I'm six dresses into my project and only four to go! It's getting more difficult to decide what patterns and fabrics to use - there are so many choices.

I took pictures of January's dress on Sunday. It felt so lovely to put on a sundress. I know things will be warming up by the end of this month - just a few weeks - but it doesn't feel like it (wind chill of -45 when we left for work this morning). I am sick of the cold and to make-believe it was summertime, even just for an hour, was pretty cool (er ... I mean warm).

I used the same pattern pieces for this dress as for my November dress just removing the very top of both front and back and adding a casing for the ribbon instead. I cut a two inch bias strip to sew down the front and added lace over that. I left the edges of the bias strip raw for a bit of texture. My piece of ribbon was just long enough to thread through the casings and make a bow; I trimmed about half a centimetre off the ends to tidy them up.

This fabric is really nice. I don't know what it is but it smells like cotton when I press it. It's soft and kind of heavy and I like the way it hangs. It had an almost linen like sheen before I washed it but crinkled up a bit afterwards. It is from the stash and I had almost forgotten about it but something had sent me digging around in a bin of old fabric and it caught my eye. I know for sure that I didn't buy it. Several years ago, when I was living with a couple of girlfriends, we went through a skirt sewing phase and both Katy and Liette bought large pieces of this plaid to make long, swirly skirts out of (I think I might have the pattern too). I know for sure one of the skirts was made but I don't remember about the second one. There were lots of leftovers anyway and it ended up in my stash.

The strip of lace down the front is from the bag of laces that Samera's mum gifted to me a few years ago. I love using the bits and pieces from that bag. So many of them are unusual and "just the thing" to finish off a project. I sometimes wonder what they've been used for before and if any of them have stories. Some of them are quite old and a few look handmade.

p.s. February's dress was going to have its photo shoot on Sunday too but when I put it on I decided the back was doing something funny and needed tweaking. With luck and sunshine I should be able to get some pictures of it on Saturday.

There was much procrastination involved in this dress, especially when it came to the last bits of finishing, but it is finally done and photographed and I'm very happy with it.

The fabric is a Nani Iro print from my stash. I don't remember what it was originally intended for but I've never been able to bring myself to cut into it before. The pattern is from the same Japanese craft book as October's dress (I think it is called Everyday Dress and Slip) and you can see the sample from the book in the second picture from this post. I really liked the simple shape of it and the way it took advantage of a border print. The fabric I used has a small border print along the selvedges that I particularly wanted as part of my dress.

I took a lot of chances with this dress: I didn't want a zipper and cut both my front and back pieces on the fold (meaning that if I later discovered I needed a zipper I wasn't going to have enough fabric to add one); I couldn't actually try pulling the dress over my head until I was nearly finished and cutting the placket (I did measure and make an educated guess before hand); I wanted the border print to be right on the bottom of the dress and had to figure out how long it should be before cutting anything ... all in all, it was a bit of a stressful process. I used almost my entire piece of fabric. There are just a few skinny wedges leftover and there is selvedge in both my shoulder seems and my hem.

I really like the armhole finishing for this dress. It calls for bias binding to be sewn to the seam allowance, then the allowance is trimmed, the bias binding folded over and the whole thing is turned to the inside and sewn down. It's so neat and tidy. The printing on my fabric is a bit rough so I used some very soft voile I had around for my binding instead.

When I started this project I really wanted to take all my dress pictures outside but reason, and prior experiences with frostbite, convinced me that was a bad idea so I set up the tripod in my sewing room instead. This also meant I could wear some cute shoes that don't normally get worn. Too fun. When I was all finished I went back into the kitchen to pour a second cup of tea. I don't think anything can make you feel quite as awesome as wearing three inch heels in your kitchen.