Winter Anna and the giveaway winner!

My internal clock is lagging behind a bit.. When the spring crocuses start blooming I  I finally finish my winter Anna and a woolen sweater.. Hmm.. 

This dress was made from stash fabrics, I only had 1.4 meters of grey wool and knew that I would love a solid dress, so I could wear it with necklaces/belts etc. It was a super tight squeeze to get everything to fit, but in the end I even cut of another 10 cm of the skirt panels, so it worked out perfectly. 

 The By Hand London girls have a great tutorial in the Anna sew-a-long on how to add sleeves to your Anna and also how to fully line your dress. 

The lining is a silk coupon with a geometric print, which I liked, but not enough to wear it on the outside. I really like it as a lining, it makes the dress super soft and comfy when I wear it! 

Fully lining this dress is quite easy. Basically you cut out another dress from your lining fabric and then attach it by machine to the zipper and the neckline and by hand at the sleeve openings. 

 At first I had sewn the lining fabric to close to the zipper, so every time I zipped it, it got caught in the zipper teeth (pic on the left)..
To prevent this, I took everything apart again and first stitched the lining to the zipper (I put the zipper right side up on the right side of the lining), but I made sure to leave enough room for the zipper to work (about 1 cm).
You also have to make sure to leave about the same width of seam allowance on the other side, otherwise your lining will be bigger then your dress (right top in the pic).

Then I had to think for a while.. I couldn't really figure out how to sew the wool to the zipper and make it invisible.. I ended up lining up my wool (with the right side up) with the side of the zipper (wrong side up) and then using my invisible zipper foot to stitch it together (right bottom pic).
I started at the top, which was a bit of a struggle as you have to make sure not to stitch the front as well, but I'm happy with the result!

I'm not sure if this makes any sense, but it did work for me, so if you have any questions just let me know!

Also at first my darts didn't line up at all, but on the second try I paid more attention and now they line up perfectly!

Hmm doesn't line up at all!

Much better..

 And now, the winner of the giveaway is:

Kriston Lion! Do you go for indulgent of practical? I'm curious!

"ooh what an awesome giveaway ! The indulgent side of me would choose the Lakeside pajamas and the Kielo wrap dress. But I think the practical side of me would choose the Archer button down and the Jamie jeans"

 Thanks everyone who entered! I had a lot of fun reading all your pattern wishes, really want to make more from Named too!

 Tomorrow we're of to Zambia and Botswana for a two week safari trip, super excited! It's always a bit sad to leave our doggies behind, but my sis will take good care of them :)

See you in two weeks!

Oh Anna, you beautiful troubled one..

Tadaa, I present to you my finished Anna dress! I feel like I've been one of the last ones to make this super cool pattern, even though I've been sewing along with the sew-along.. I used my self dyed silk and I'm in love with how the colours turned out.  

I did have some issues with my dress, but those are completely my own fault.. First of all, my fabric was a bit too narrow and short, so I had to cut some skirt panels slightly off grain, which off course resulted in them stretching a bit while I was attaching the skirt to the top part.. So the darts don't really line up perfectly.

 Then.. I decided to use a shorter zipper because that was what I had in my stash.. After unpicking the zipper 4 times because the waist seamline didn't line up I got it perfectly alligned! But then, I tried to put the dress on and I couldn't get it to fit over my head! The zipper was too short.. So off I went to the store..

Thigh high split? Where?

When parking my bike close to the store I remembered my sister telling me something about bike-police  taking your bike when you don't park it in the right spot.. So I looked left and right, didn't see anyone and quickly bought the right zipper. When I came out of the store I saw three men and a pick up truck standing next to my bike! So I quickly ran there and they told me that they were about to take my bike cause I wasn't allowed to park there.. Luckily they were very kind and let my take my bike after I promised not to park there anymore.. Pfff!

Hand stitched split

All french seams

I used french seams throughout my dress, but at first I used a normal seam to attach the skirt to the top panel. When I had to unpick the zipper for the last time I decided to change the only normal seam to a french seam aswell. Glad I did that because it looks super neat now on the inside!

I hand stitched the split, which I'm quite happy with. My boss asked me if I could put on my deodorant using the split, since it's super high, haha! I wore this dress to a wedding and got a lot of compliments, even from the bride :) and some people told me that I could have been the bride.. I'll take that as a compliment too..

 And it looks great together with my Victoria blazer!

You can also follow me on Instagram now: @Revesmecanique, for more sewing/doggy pics!