Sewing Adventures – floral insertion dress

So I’m a little bit in love with this dress, it’s so cool with all the amazing trim detail.

The fabric is a lightweight cotton Sateen with a small amount of spandex which adds a nice bit of “give” to the fabric.

Inspired by my last dress with insertion trim I wanted to see how I could use it more? Then Pitt Trading got in even more amazing trims and so I got to planning.

This wide trim I loved but it felt too wide to use it as is, so I cut it in half.

Using the width of the fabric I sewed the trim along creating the hem, then measured up a small section, cut and overlocked the edges, inserted a trim and repeated that all over again for the third row of trim. Super easy.

If you do this just be sure to measure where you are in relation to the length of your skirt or your trim may be inadvertently flashing your knickers!

The bodice is my own block, I wanted to be able to wear a bra so I slashed the panels to allow for that and inserted the trim.

While I really like the fit and flare silhouette I find it can get a little repetitive? Adding a ruffle sleeve seemed like a good idea to break up the “sameness” of the shape and take advantage of how fashion forward I wanted to the dress to look. I added the ruffle, I wasn’t sure so I did an Instagram poll.

It was evenly split down the middle on the yes/no count. Right up till the very end I was going to keep the ruffle and then I tried it on and went nope. So off they came.

The back of the dress is finished with an invisible zip, neck and armholes are bound with bias binding. I had the zip in and tried it on again, I decided I wanted to take a little more out of the back neck and increase the sway back adjustment. I unpicked the zip, made the changes and put the zip back in again.

All in all a fairly easy make but really taken to the next level with the addition of such fashionable trims.

Here it is in action while working at Pitt Trading. I’ve paired it with my Brightside Shrug from MiY collection by Wendy Ward.

Fabric: lightweight cotton sateen from Pitt Trading
Trims: all from Pitt Trading (they come in colours other than black too).

Dress Pattern: My own bodice block and gathered rectangle skirt.

Alterations: look at increasing the sway back adjustment on the block, take 1cm wedge out of each side of CB neckline where zip is inserted.