Lizzy's Make's - The Stevie Dress

Here is my most recent Make and I think I am joining in on the #sewingstevie band wagon but I love it.

I am a big Tilly and the buttons fan, her patterns are right on trend and her instructions are so good, with each pattern being £12.50 for such good quality they’re great.

I have made quite a few now, the Coco, Cleo, Bettine, (for a gift as not quite my style), Arielle and I have the Mila all cut out on my to sew pile but being summer it is waiting until the sun goes in for me to get around to it.

When I saw the Stevie pattern as a preview email I knew that was the pattern that lots of customers had been asking for, a simple tunic, Yes get it in and get it made!

At our fourth Make Sewcial they were in and almost sold out all in the one day.

Two of our fabulous customers went away that day and made them over the weekend and they were looking gorgeous. Two different fabrics and the two different styles

Max in the nani IRO linen with the button and loop fastening

Sheila in the new Cosmo Japanese fabric with the tie back closure (Sheila lengthened hers slightly)

Ok that was it I had to make it, I knew the shape, tunic style was perfect for me, now it was just choosing the fabric.

I had been eying up the Kokka double gauze fabric since it came in last week and I knew I wanted to have a plainer front and contrast back yoke, cuffs and pocket so with the perfect combo the last metre or so of the Merchant and Mills Frontier grey dogtooth Linen which I had been lusting over ever since we got it in.

I had a day at home yesterday so I chose to sew! In the beautiful weather my fabric was washed and dried in an hour or so in the morning. Pattern all traced pinned and transferred I started to cut.

Now I used about 1.2 m of the main linen fabric which was perfect for the dress, I did lengthen my dress by 2 inches as I knew even though I am short at 5 ft ish I didn’t want it to short.  The contract fabric for the back yoke, cuffs, back facing and pocket I only needed .5 m. I had a little left of the linen fabric and not a lot left of the double gauze so it worked out well.

Both fabrics were lovely to work with. And it was so nice to make a simple dress, but with different techniques, I have found recently a lot of my patterns are two pieces, darts, bias, hem, it was getting a little boring. I know I could choose a more complicated pattern but right now I don’t give myself the time to concentrate so I have kept to simple patterns and this one is perfect.

Anyway back to the dress, I can honestly say I didn’t have any problems or troubles with this pattern or dress! It went together like a dream, I chose the button loop fastening and I would say don’t cut your elastic before you sew in as having it slightly longer gives you something to hold onto while you sew in in and then trim it after. The only other point I would say is when you sew your back yoke onto the bodice Tilly says to make sure your back yoke openings are the same length, when I did this I did make sure but maybe I wasn’t careful enough as there is a slight difference. Next time I would make sure they both line up along the top edge and probably use a clip to keep them in place whilst I trim if needs be and pin the bodice and yoke together, keeping the clip there whilst I sew too.

This is definitely a really great beginners sewing pattern for a dress and a staple that has been added to my repeat pile.

I am so impressed with another so well thought out Tilly pattern I love the Stevie!