I used my gorgeous Minerva Exclusive Cotton Lycra to make a Pattern Emporium Dream On dress. This is such a great pattern and gives you a lot of options that you can mix and match. There are four necklines, including a roll neck for colder days. Four dress lengths, a fitted sleeve in five lengths, a sleeveless and a long or short bishop sleeve. If that doesn't give you enough options there is also a waist band so you can make it as a skirt instead of a dress. Finally there are pockets if you want to go to the trouble of adding them, I did of course add them! I like a nice pocket!!

Kate of Pattern Emporium does recommend not using a cotton lycra over 180gsm and this one from Minerva is 220gsm. I requested it knowing that I could change my mind and make something else if I didn't think it would be suitable for the pattern. When my fabric arrived I washed it in the machine and hung it to dry. Once it was dry I thought it would work well with the pattern so it was off to the dinning table to cut it out.

The edges of the fabric did curl a bit, but not too badly. I cut out using my rotary cutter and it sliced through the fabric easily. I opted for the mid round neckline, the long sleeve and the knee length skirt. I had thought I might go for a longer skirt, but decided the print was probably a bit busy for a longer dress and might look a bit over powering. I think the knee length works very well with the print.

I put the dress together using my overlocker/coverstitch machine which handled the fabric well. Kate has a great tutorial for gathering the skirt using elastic and it results in a lovely even gather. She recommends Framilastic for this. I used this to gather the top of the skirt. I have used it in the past to gather the lower tier as well, but I found it irritating as it made the join between the upper and lower tier a bit stiff. It made the skirt feel uncomfortable when I moved. So this time I tried some elastic that I used for making face masks during COVID. I had quite a bit left over and it was very soft. It has worked brilliantly and is much more comfortable to wear. I don't think it would be suitable for the waist gathers but I would use it again as I have used it in this project.

I vote this Minerva Exclusive Cotton Lycra as a good choice for this dress pattern. The skirt does hang away from the body a little bit, but I don't think it ruins the silhouette of the dress. I will post a video as well to show how the fabric moves.

I am entering this make for #FinishItFeb as I have had a few Brand Ambassador projects to carch up on following the bug I caught in January. It put me behind on my makes, but I am now all caught up with my projects.

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