The blue linen dress

Do you love wearing dresses? I certainly do! I love them all – knee or calf length or even maxi dresses. These pictures were from my 35th birthday. My husband and I went to visit a place near Sofia on a day trip. Because it was my birthday and a very beautiful Sunday altogether, I had to wear something special. I just had to wear this dress. It'd certainly call for high heels but you don't want to climb in high heels, right?  

This year I've sewed a couple of dresses. I hadn't sewed clothes for myself for years until this spring when I started my wedding dress. After that I can't stop sewing clothes. 

Also, I don't enjoy using a pattern more than once. My “motto” is that there are too many patterns to be tried to repeatedly sew only one of them. However, making my second wedding dress, I felt so much in love with the pattern that I just had to make another one from it. Additionally, the pattern included a lot of hand sewing and new (for me) techniques. Thus, I needed to sew a second one. I even had a ready fabric waiting for it.

In February when I was browsing the shops to find the perfect fabric for my wedding dresses I found some wonderful linen in different colours. I got two samples from the whitish one and 4-5 meters from some light blue one. I was so impressed with the blue one that I took it just to have at home. I also thought I might be able to use it as a colourful accent at the wedding. Later, I could not get just one accent and the blue fabric was left alone. At least until I was ready to sew it. It was a perfect fabric for this calf length dress in 50s style.

For making the bodice I followed the pattern. However, earlier when sewing my wedding dress, I found that I had to alternate the pattern for my shoulders. The pattern required broader ones. This resulted in cutting the biased pieces of the bodice shorter and asked for some additional work. But I just loved the upper line of the bodice. It is so flattering. The bodice, except its top part, used the same linen fabric for the upper and inner part. Sewing this linen was not easy, it was constantly moving as it was a living thing below my fingers. 

What I particularly loved was the skirt. For making it I didn't follow the pattern but improvised. I'd left around 3 meters of fabric which I sewed in a big tube (short ends together). Then, I folded the fabric in a way that the sewn ends were on the inside and the long ends are together. I personally love to have garments with clean inner parts. I used the raffle foot of my machine to gather the long ends until I got approximately the length of my waist. Next, I machine sewed the upper part of the skirt to the bodice. I attached the zipper on the back being careful to match the left and right waist sides. To finish, I hand sewed the inner part of the skirt to the bodice.

The whole process required a bit of work and some time but I love the final result. You can almost wear the dress reversed from inside out J

The pattern was a Vintage Vogue pattern V1094.

This view deserved some climbing, right?