Hello Minerva community💖

Hope you are having a lovely week! I’m excited to share my recent creation for the Minerva Ambassador Program. I hope you like it and enjoy reading about the making process.

I’m a jazz singer and I wanted to make a dress that is comfortable to wear in the winter season. I was looking at a list of fabrics and this beautiful fabric came at the perfect time! I thought a 1950s style dress would be lovely for this fabric.

I had seen this design before on Minerva's website in viscose challis fabric. I really liked the floral design and the combination of colors. Then I found out that it is also available as crushed velvet fabric and I was very lucky to have it for my project. It is really soft on the skin and easy to move around as it stretches. The fabric was gifted for this project so thank you very much for your support Minerva. I didn’t know but this design has 7 different fabric choices and you can pick it depending on a dress that you’d like to make!

I've used crush velvet fabric before and I remember that I had to cut the fabric the correct way. Like carpet, the velvet fabric hairs follow in the same direction and if you rub against it it feels different. So I made sure that I cut the fabric so all the hairs follow from the top to the bottom of the dress. Around the neckline was a bit tricky but I managed to cut them all the same way. When I was sewing I used a ball point needle as the fabric stretches. I found the fabric is easy to sew but in a few places I found it a little bit hard. Because I decided to add a collar for the neckline, I had to sew 3 layers of fabric. It was thick and I was worried that the neckline would look bulky. It turned out fine after I understitched the neckline and I'm quite happy with the cute collar.

I love Gertie’s pattern and I used my Night and Day dresses from the Charm Pattern series. I've used the pattern before (https://www.minerva.com/posts/1168798, https://www.minerva.com/posts/1201584) and it has so many pattern choices. This time I used a round neck bodice and added a collar as I haven’t done it before. I also used a flared skirt and three quarter sleeves with shaped hem patterns. I used the same fabric for the collar but I've seen people using different fabrics for the collar which looks amazing. The collar actually reminds me of my junior high school sailor uniform like the costume from the anime Sailor Moon.

I always have a bit of fabric left after I make a dress and I started researching about making hats. I thought it would be lovely to have a matching fabric hat and gloves. I found a vintage hat pattern on Etsy and I finally made a vintage style half hat this time. I’m very happy with both the dress and the hat and can’t wait to wear it for my gigs.

Thank you for reading this, I hope it helps with whatever you are making. A big thank you to everyone who posts on this community, it has been a great help and such an inspiration💕

#MinervaBrandAmbassador #MinervaMakers #Minervamakes #charmpatterns #gertiespattern #gerties #sewingproject #nightanddaydress #nightanddaydresspattern #sewinginspo #sewingideas #sewingidea #velvet #sewinginspiration #pinupgirl #vintage #classic #classicstyle #sewretro #vintagestyle #sewvintage #isew