Parisian Polka-dot Hawthorn

Hello my lovely readers! You are in for a treat this week; I was at home during the day at the weekend and got my tripod and camera out and took not one set of blog photos, but five! Yup, I had a big photo shoot session and finally got pictures of some past makes.

I am really desperate to show you my New Favourite Dress, however I’ll start in chronological order with my first Hawthorn dress.

The pattern and fabric were both birthday presents in the summer; the fabric came from Paris via my step-mum and is a gorgeous turquoise covered with polka-dots. I had originally thought I’d make an Elisalex dress with it, but when I struggled to find a zipper that came close to matching, it became destined to be a Hawthorn shirt dress.

I made a blouse and my bowling shirt before making this which gave me time to sort out the fitting and finishing details. I did my usual FBA, changing the dart into diagonal French darts, and got rid of some of the facings in favour of using bias binding. During my first wearing I realised there was a tad too much waist ease, so I took in the side seams a bit; it’s not a perfect adjustment but it’ll do.

This would have become a favourite dress if it wasn’t for the dye. I pre-washed the fabric before sewing, and have washed it a few times, but the turquoise is a really strong colour and keeps rubbing off on everything! My sewing machine turned blue during sewing, and when I wore it my arms and my slip underneath turned turquoise. Eek. After more washing, the colour transfer isn’t as bad, but you can see under the arms where the white spots have turned blue.

I was trying to get festive with some Christmas tunes while taking all these photos so here is a dancing-twirly picture.