Hello friends!

I'm so excited to share this dress with you - this was a loooong project, as you can imagine!

I've made quite a few garments from the Minerva Exclusive Viscose Challis range of fabrics, and the off-cuts and left-overs were starting to pile up.. But they were so pretty, I felt bad just sticking them in my off-cuts box and forget about them. So I decided to try my hand at this patchwork clothing trend going around on social media!

I've made some patchwork items before, but always small things, and never a full-blown garment before. With this in mind, I decided to make a house dress - I really wanted to make one anyway, and I thought if there were any imperfections I could still get wear out of it.

I thought making it all from the same kind of fabric would help in how the fabric behaved and how to care for it later, and I think it was a good decision.

So I spent many hours cutting out small 5cmx5cm squares from my scraps, and then stitching and pressing, and stitching, and pressing and cutting some more.

One of the things I did that I think was quite a good idea was to lay out the pattern pieces on the fabric blocks as I created them, to give me an idea of how much I had left to go and to avoid wasting fabric.

I used the Vogue 8577 dress pattern for the bodice, but soon realised that I didn't have enough off-cuts to make that huge skirt so I drafted a super simple skirt myself.
I also added pockets.

This project was a true scrap-busting one - I used only off-cuts, scraps and leftover fabric for the patchwork, for the lining I used left-over fabric too, used whatever threads I had leftover in my bobbins and left-over spools of thread I had gathering dust in my drawer, and I even used one-off buttons from my vintage collection!

I actually had a lot of fun making this, and it came together super quickly (once all the patchwork had been assembled).

I made it intentionally bigger because I've been going through some weight fluctuations and as this is a house dress, I wanted it to be comfy and not too form fitting.

I'm really happy with the result- I have a cute and practical dress I can wear all year round (I plan to layer it kind of like a pinafore in winter) and a little reminder of all the fancier dresses I've made from these beautiful fabrics 🥰


Thank you for reading,

Olga





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