Black and white Ivy dress

I started working on this dress in December of last year. I ran out of seasonally appropriated fabrics so I decided to work on a summers dress. I cut out the fabric but never started sewing. It was way to cold to even think about a summer dress, so I left it until I came across the social sew hosted by Allie J. The dress I had planned fitted perfectly within the spring shower theme and it gave me the motivation to (finally) start sewing. It is still way to cold to wear it but at least it is ready to wear when the weather turns nice. 

I bought the fabric quite a while ago at the stoffen spektakel. Because of the print I never knew what to make form it. I wanted a dress but nothing with a seam at the waist breaking up the pattern. Most patterns that didn't have a horizontal seam at the waist had vertical darts and I didn't want that either. 

So when I saw this pattern in La Maison Victor I knew it was perfect for this pattern. As always I made a size 36. The only thing I did different are the slits in the side seams. I have rather wide hips and I could not get the dress over my hips. Because I didn't want to put the dress on and off by stepping in to it, I choose to make two slits. 

I love the low back but unfortunately it does show my bra strap at some moments. In the first photo it doesn't show but you can see it in the one below. I should find a solution for this, probably buy one of those extender straps that wrap around your waist.  

I tried to pattern match the fabric at the sides. But It didn't work well because the fabric was not symmetric. I folded the fabric in half there where the print was the narrowest. I put pins in the fabric after it was folded at the border of the print but the print didn't match. Nothing I could do about that. So I just centred the print in the front and the back, and didn't bother with the sides. One side looks good, the other one not so. The fabric was really cheap, 10€ for a coupon of 1,5 m. Maybe to be expected?

Now I just hope it gets warm enough soon so that I can wear it. It was so cold when I took those photos. 

Dusty top

The second piece in my spring sewing spree! You might have seen it already in my previous post about the Milly culotte. I was not planning on writing a separate post, but I like it so much that it deserves  its own post. It is the dusty top by La Maison Victor. I love the asymmetric design with all the pleats at the shoulder.

I already made this pattern once, this one. The fabric was a bit to thick and the neckline to low. So I made alterations. Razed the neckline with 3 cm It was not as easy to do that because the pattern is not cut on the fold. Because of the pleats at the one shoulder the pattern is not symmetric. After a few tries to get it even I folded the facing pattern and drew a new higher neckline on the facing pattern. Once I got the new facing piece I used that to altered the front pattern piece. I also narrowed the waist a little bit, I lost some weight recently and I didn't want it to be to loose. The pleats on the shoulder make it full on the top and I wanted to balance it out a bit. 

I guess the fabric is a polyester blend of some sort. The right side is a shiny very smooth, the wrong side is mat and coarser but nice to wear. 

This top is rapidly becoming one of my most worn handmade items. The colour goes with nearly everything I own. I never know what to wear during spring. It is often to cold to wear a skirt without tights and I'm to stubborn to wear them in spring.  So it is lovely to have a new top to wear with my trousers.