A grey dress for grey days – Sewaholic Davie dress

Hi Everyone – there has been a bit of a posting break because it has been raining here pretty much all the time for weeks on end (honestly – it’s the north, that’s what it does here..)

I seem to have such a limited amount of time available at weekends to get pictures and whenever I have a free moment the rain starts again…

Anyway – the clouds parted briefly on Sunday so I rushed out to get pictures of my new dress – braving the cold!The good thing about waiting before posting about this dress is that I have had a chance to wear it a few times so I can confirm that I do really like it and it is in regular wardrobe rotation.

I needed a new work appropriate dress as part of my FESA plans – I originally intended to make a wrap dress, but in the end I decided to use a pattern I already knew so I could make something quick! I picked up this  fine striped dark grey ponte at Barry’s during the Sewbrum meetup and I knew it would be perfect.

I made a first version of the  Sewaholic Davie dress earlier in the year, very soon after the pattern was released.I used a really stretchy viscose jersey fabric last time and I blamed the stretchy fabric when I had to raise the shoulders about three inches because the under-arm and princess seam were sitting very low – resulting in quite a lot of  side bra on show. Looking at other versions I can see that several other people made a similar adjustment and looking at the length of the armscye I decided I would need to raise the underarm seam by at least an inch so I adjusted the pattern before cutting out.

The Davie comes together very easily. I stitched the centre front seam on my machine so I could make the centre keyhole more easily. I top-stitched the centre seam but I sewed all the other seams on my overlocker for speed and didn’t do any other top stitching.I pinned the side seams before sewing everything up and I found that despite the adjustments I made to the pattern, the armscye was still too low. I ended up taking a further inch off the side seams from underarm to waist to pull everything in and lifting the shoulder seam about an inch and a half. Next time I will fold this out of the top of the bodice pieces above the bust line and probably go down a size for bust and shoulders.

The keyhole is still slightly lower than is ideal (I think I might have had to sew it up if I hadn’t raised the shoulder seam and pulled it up a bit higher!) I used a strip of viscose jersey to bind the neckline and sleeves. Last time I just turned under the edges and topstitched but that was quite fiddly and the binding gave a much neater finish.

This is the perfect work dress, its cosy to wear, doesn’t need any ironing, looks smart and has a twirly skirt!

So who else is still struggling to finish autumn sewing plans when it is already winter? I would love to sew a Christmas party dress, if I could just finish a few other things first….