The Silver (floral) lining

I had a bit of a disaster this week – I attempted to take in this dress and it went horribly wrong. It’s a shame because I love this dress, but it’s always been far too big around the waist and it’s been getting more gapey (probably not a word) at the top of the princess seam – not good when everyone can see your bra! So I: unpicked the bodice and took in the princess seams at the front / tried it on and it was still a bit loose / took in the sides / ridiculously foolishly CUT AWAY the excess / tried it on again – NOOOOOO it’s too small now and weirdly shaped!! Anyhoo – so I sulked in the mirror for a while and then gave up and went to make brownies – yum!

30 minutes later the brownies (and bowl licking) had obviously soothed my wounded soul and cleared my mind. It was now obvious that this was a fortunate mistake. I’ve been making Grainline’s Kat Colorblocked Dress in the fabric pictured below…

Gaze into the distance and ponder over the mysterious light source

…and have been searching my current stash (not wanting to buy anything still) for the right lining, then I had the tingling of a revelation … ‘hang on I need lining…I could use the pretty cotton for lining…no it’s too pretty to hide…shame you won’t see it…if only… A REVERSIBLE DRESS!!!’ So I hopped straight on the old bay of e and ordered a reversible zip.

I went for the exposed look to break up the print a bit more

Oo it all lines up so well 🙂

The added bonus is that I have the original shirt dress pattern, the fabric shop still has the fabric, and I now know to make it smaller in certain places – so I could easily make the exact same thing again. Or I could just accept that this dress has served me well once and is now moving on to greater things.

I was intending the finished dress to be my Birthday Dress (yes the capitals are intentional) for this year. I’m going out for dinner with friends, but if I wear this dress I think it will be hidden under many layers as it’s fricking cold! In fact I wanted lovely, spring styled photos of this dress, but it’s so cold outside and I couldn’t face getting all dressed up to turn blue anyway, so I settled for lacklustre indoor ones. Hope you don’t mind!

Even in the house I needed a cardigan

Obviously the ‘lining’ side isn’t colour blocked as I didn’t want to overcomplicate matters any more. I absolutely loved cutting out all the pieces for this dress, but I drew the line at 12 pieces for the one bodice and 4 for the other! This is usually my least favourite part, but I think that watching Mad Men in the background and being in the living room, which is warm, rather than my sewing room, which suffice to say – is not, made it all the more fun. I had to play around and make up the skirt pattern because I wanted to use the skirt hem from the old dress – hence why the skirt is slightly higher at the front. I’m going to pretend that was intentional.

This dress was very simple to make, however it’s a teensy bit big and I’m worried it might slip so I’m contemplating adding some sort of thin strap. I think it also didn’t help that I only added boning around the sides and back. Perhaps I’ll go back and add it to the front as well? Any opinions on that? Obviously I could make the straps detachable. And would more boning help it stay up more? Hope you like it! I still haven’t decided which side I prefer.