Create Hope Inspire: Philippa Dress by Muse Patterns

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Philippa Dress by Muse Patterns

Hiya

Whoop,

it’s Indie Pattern Month over at the monthly stitch blog, the time we all go crazy making awesome patterns, celebrating Indie design and sometimes win prizes!

My gorgeous sister Naomi and I do a lot of talking, scheming and ‘opinionating’ (it is totally a thing!) together coming up to IPM. A few days before the challenges were announced we did a full Indie pattern inventory (we had more than we realised) and did some sharing, as good sisters do.

I was really keen to make the Philippa dress by Muse Patterns. I like its 60s vibe and as a dress maker and wearer I thought it would fit my wardrobe. This year I have set myself a challenge of buying no new fabric (second hand is fine) so I had to dive into my plentiful stash.

The fabric I really wanted to use turned out to be too small so I dived again and came up with this fun green, lime and aubergine number cotton drill. Last week I was also given some beautiful fabric offcuts so I used a jade green cotton sateen from the pile for the contrast panels.

In terms of the pattern this is the first Muse Pattern I have made. I measured myself and came out as a 40. I used the D-cup panel option – it comes in a B-cup or D-cup and as a 12E I thought the D would give me the most service!!

I am not a toile maker or pattern hacker I just cut and go, which usually serves me well. And when it doesn’t I’m not too worried, the benefits of not being a perfectionist!

(We’re also having ‘where the heck is our camera' issues at the moment so a *very* wiggly 8 year old took these – less than focussed photos on my phone!)

I liked the order the dress was put together in and found most of the instructions very straightforward to follow. I even used an invisible zip and I am really proud with how it went in.

I was careful when doing the pattern placement to try to keep the central design evenly balanced.

Luckily for me the side seams were the last part of the construction with the exception of bias binding the armholes (SO much better than facings) and hemming. The seam allowance across the pattern is 1cm and I ended up taking a 4cm seam on both sides and then pinning the dress on inside out to curve into the waist part as well (up to another 1.5cm+ at the deepest point).

I’m not sure if the pattern is supposed to have a lot more ease than I wanted but it did seem ~~very large~~ enormous on me in the originally finished state. I was glad that the problem was too big which is much easier to fix than the other way! It was good to be able to adjust it with the side seams though and I was glad to not lose any of the main fabric.

I love this dress. I will definitely make another one (not this week though!). It’s comfy, it’s cute and I can imagine myself having fun with using print on print with the contrast panels. Also, pockets! We all, well most of us, love pockets – amiright?! (And the perfectly matching cardi was a handmedown from my mama last week!)