We here at CM are big big fans of Megan Neilsen's Brumby skirt. It's my favourite makes- it gets out of the draw at least once a week. I had some excess light weight medium denim , and hankering to try it out, it was a perfect duo.
I love that the instructions for the Darling is so straight forward. As is standard practice- I traced out the pattern on Swedish tracing paper first. I have a small chest, length wise so I normally need to adjust shoulders so I don't show boobage- I wish I had done that for this dress. More on that later..
The denim is incredibly light weight- like some of our chambray's, it was nice to work with, and could withstand a few rounds with a seam ripper (which is most important).
I wanted to slightly jazz up the whole appearance so for the neckline and the waist ties I used Cotton + Steels Bluebird.
I also wanted to add it to the rim of the pockets but only for the edges. I didn't want to use a lot of this fabric up, if no one was going to see more than the lip. So I cut out the pockets out of the denim and then cut 4 strips of about 5 cm of the Bluebird and sew it on top. (not straight on- right sides together sewing the most inner side and the edge was sewn when the pocket was sewn into the dress),
The only time I needed to refer to Megan Nielsens tutorial (which is very good) was for the plackets. Using 2 different fabrics made it slightly more complicated (but only slightly). But plackets and I don't really get on,(just ask the Colette Negorni shirt that has languished in my sewing box with a backwards placket in the arm for the last 2 years.). But it wasn't all that bad. There were step by step pictures and short of seam ripping and re stitching about 5 times, because I couldn't get the symmetry right- and I sew wonky sometimes. It was done in no time!
I also decided to use the brightest reddest buttons we stock for this, I wanted them to pop out- I was trying to avoid it looking at all drab.
Back to small chest issues, and this is where learning how to make adjustments are a good skill to have, I should have fixed this all before I started sewing, rookie mistake- too excited. The front is now too low and I need to wear a vest under it (this is what I have to do with almost all of my dresses) and a result of my short torso, the darts have come up too high and it looks like I have headlights (nipple showage) I'm trying to work out ways to fix it, but I have't come up with anything- I'll just attempt to unpick it and try to put them in again. I will make this dress again, but I will defiantly make up a toile for the top half first, making the v smaller and shortening the darts.
Shoulda really spotted the problem at this stage really.....
On a note- I had finished cutting and sewing up the bodice and child walked in took a look at it and said "you could turn that into a Nelson vest" Thanks- but I had to admit, she had a point.
