The Adrianna Dress

When I saw this dress pattern from The Friday Pattern Company I had a sharp intake of breath. A lot has to do with the brilliant fabric choice on their model that lends itself to showing off this simple clever design.

I didn’t have immediate plans to make it but was certainly tempted. Then one afternoon I was musing over my fabric stash and I came across a recently gifted piece of viscose crepe with embossed birds. A massive light bulb popped above my head and before I could say “stash buster” I’d ordered the pdf and got it all cut out!

To my delight, I just had enough fabric! This makes me very happy. The pattern called for a bit more, but I did squeeze this size L dress out of just 1.8 metres. Very satisfying.

I have previously made the Adrienne Blouse from The Friday Pattern Company. This is a similar, knit t shirt version of this pattern but I decided not to try and adapt that. Good call, as the construction with the facing over the shoulder seam is very neat and clever, something I would not have come up.

The make-up was not all plain sailing.The elastic on the shoulders was far too short for me. The measurements for lengths of elastic are given on the pattern as a guide, but of course will depend on the elasticity of your elastic. I did think mine was a bit tight, and then when inserted it, I had my shoulders up round my ears! I had tacked the sleeve in place with this problem in mind, so it wasn’t too much hassle to take apart and re-insert longer lengths of elastic.

I love the way this dress looks on the inside. I have a picture on my blog post that shows this. When you insert the sleeves the front and back facings are also incorporated and then these cover the seams. Neat!

When it came to the hem, I wasn’t sure that a turned-up machine sewn hem was going to work on this fabric. My unfinished hem was wonky, meaning I had to lop some off to even it up. This in mind I didn’t want to do a hand sewn hem either. I think hand sewn hems look good when they are deep, but I didn’t want this dress any shorter. So, I got my overlocker into a 2-thread rolled hem mode and whizzed round. Very quick, neat, and I think it suits this fabric. Also, it meant that I needn’t show any more leg than I wanted to!

I made no alterations to this size L version apart from the fore mentioned shoulder elastic.

Many thanks to sewing buddy Hannah who gifted this fabric. I am so pleased I was able to use every drop and I love the results.

Thanks for reading.