The most beautiful fabric, dress plans of my dreams and ALOT of tears!

So where to start with this project? Firstly the fabric, basically it was love at first sight! As a brand ambassador I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to use such a quality fabric.

Minerva Exclusive Jaguar Road Silk Single Georgette Fabric. When I first saw this I just knew that I wanted to make something fabulous for my birthday. To me it screamed dark, cool but slightly dangerous print and the feel is amazing and the drape is something else all together. Now I know, using super drapey fabric is not my top skill but having a few recent opportunities I thought I learnt a few skills and I was feeling more confident.

But really you need to know more about the fabric first. A Minerva exclusive, this gorgeous design is printed onto a pure silk single georgette. Georgette is part of the crepe family with a wonderful surface texture but overly textured. It is semi sheer but using this darker coyote wasn’t o see through. It’s soft and airy with a drape and matt finish. Single georgette is a fine, lightweight fabric that is semi sheer, so all of the stabilising techniques, sharp fine needles and pins. Take time time and more time. Super care when cutting trying not to pull the fabric at all which is really hard as I do not have big rotary cutter board to manage the process this way. It really does feel amazing, it is 100% silk so very luxurious, and the colour tones of the print are really lovely.

So now we know how precious and skilled you need to be to get a high finish you will not be surprised that I chose a very simple pattern design for a pert dress. I have recently been inspired by @littlemousesews she had the cutest Mini trapeze dress and basically I planned to steal the idea! Back in the summer I made the Merchant and Mills trapeze dress in a nice stable cotton with no modifications. I felt that simply making another but shorter would be simple enough, in theory it was. I had the pattern cut out to my bust size and the size was perfect. I did shorten the dress using the pattern markings. I really took my time cutting, I had a new needle. I actually ran into problems when I wasn’t happy with the width and height of the hem. So I the facing are perfect they create a lovely shape that really highlights the fabric, to slim down the dress as it looked a bit tent like I took of a cm off the side seams. This was good, a little drape but not too much fabric. Now this is where it really fell apart and I genuinely cried. The dress was basically made up and I needed to shorten by a few centimetres for the desired look. Oh how I wished I’d left it! I just could NOT get that hem straight! I tried several time my beautiful dress getting shorter and short until it wasn’t a dress any longer! And even now the hem is a total nightmare! I was so upset thinking I had ruined such a beautiful fabric, not being able to see past my mistakes. But after I calmed down it took at least a week, I thought it would look so nice actually tucked into jeans. So there we have it, my new look! It wasn’t at all what I planned and I still think I should give the dress another go. But I am so happy with this look now. I also have so good remnant that hope to make cute tie side knickers with. We all have best made plans and sewing certainly teaches us to make the most of our mistakes.

Thankyou as ever ti the Minerva tea