Ciao bella, my first Belladone..

Update: I completely forgot to add the Sew Weekly Reunion facts for this post, so here we go!

The Facts

Fabric: Cotton with a little stretch from Schreuder in Rotterdam

Notions: Green invisible zipper, pink bias tape and fusible tape to prevent stretching

Pantone Challenge colors: Vivacious, Emarald and Mykonos Blue

Pantone colour chart

Pattern: Deer and Doe's Belladone

Year: 2012?

Time to complete: About 5 hours

First worn: To dinner with friends in Italy

Wear again? Yes! I already have twice :)

Total Cost: Around 30 euro's excluding the pattern

Some of you already guessed it, but I made a Belladone dress! This has only been my second Deer and Doe pattern which I made, but I’m amazed by how beautiful and easy to sew their patterns are! I finished my Belladone dress within a week, and it was mostly done in 15 minutes of sewing after work/while my bath was filling/before bedtime.. 

Small bits but I’ve been enjoying those more and more recently.

At the same time I was knitting like crazy trying to finish my sisters bday present, (I didn’t finish it in time, but it is finished now!). 

Knitting the sleeves..

And the Belladone sewing was proving to be very relaxing. The pattern instructions are very well written and I hardly had to use my seam ripper, Yay!

The fabric is cotton with a little bit of stretch, so I stabilised the edges of the dress. Offcourse I forgot to stabilise the back pieces and did so after I stitched them (not sure if this will hold up, but I don’t want an extra thick line of stitches on the back.. )

The armholes and the neckline are finished with bias tape, which I folded to the inside, so it isn’t visible from the outside. It still makes me very happy when I see it however :)

Since I got my new sewing machine in January my invisible zippers haven’t excactly been invisible. I was getting really fed up with this, so I invested in an invisible zipper foot for my Pfaff. I bought the foot after sewing this zipper however, so it is not super invisible, but good enough to be allowed to stay like it is.

Semi invisible zipper..

 I’ve gotton loads of compliments on this dress, also in the fabric store in Italy they really liked it, which is always nice! My grandma said that she thinks that the armholes might be a little bit too tight, but when I look at the pictures I’m not sure I agree.. Also when wearing it, it doesn’t feel too tight all the time, only when I make strange arm movements..  

Yay! Pockets!

The only thing I will alter for a next make is to lenghten the bodice by 1-2 cm, now it ends just a bit above my natural waist, nothing too bad, but something I will fix next time.

This will also be my entry for the first Sew Weekly Reunion challenge, which is to use the Pantone fall 2013 colours. When I saw this fabric I thought the pink is like the Vivacious colour, the green resembles Emerald and the blue colour made me think of the Mykonos Blue.. Great fabric for this challenge!

Next up are some fall sewing plans which I’ve made (and I’m hoping to stick with them). For most of them I already bought fabric in Italy and I’m curious to see what you guys think!