Art Gallery Fabrics Red Dress

I have been wondering what to spend my birthday money on for a while now and as my birthday was a number of months ago I thought I would treat myself to this lovely fabric.  I am quite bad at buying for myself and I suppose that is not such a bad thing, I usually buy bargain fabric or very rarely anything above the budget range so this was a bit of a treat for me.  I only bought one metre and squashed a dress out of that!   I used an existing dress that I made the pattern my own pattern for and cut around that, it was a quick make and I went out in it last week for a curry with my husband.

I would have got a picture with it on but we were in a hurry to go out when I wore it and I have a faff  with the tripod on my own so here it is on my faithful model complete with dog bowls (keeping it real you see) no photoshop perfection here. Ha ha.

This has got to be the simplest dress to make and I see so many expensive patterns for this very simple style of dress and I have to say I really don't get it.  I must urge you to try it with some cheap jersey and experiment a little .  ( Maybe not the art gallery fabric!) You will learn far more than from an expensive pattern.

I have received my first copy of Simply sewing magazine, it is probably a bit basic for me but at £1 a copy for the trial I am sure there are bits I will use.  I decided to try the pattern for sizing for this Minerva fabric, I'll make the basic top to go with trousers and let you know how the sizing is.  This is another example of a basic top/dress so useful for those of you that want a very simple pattern for tops and dresses.  If any of you are interested in a series on ways to hack that pattern for lots of different looks please let me know in the comments and I will do some posts on that.

I hope to have some time to get on with this tomorrow, although I m not sure we will have the weather to wear it anytime soon.  This pattern on the left I made my blue mock jumpsuit from last year.  I made the trousers narrower and added belt loops I intend to do the same thing with this as it was such a good make. In fact if you are going to buy any patterns this one is really good value as you get three items, really good value for me as a friend gave it to me.

I hope you are all staying well and avoiding the winter colds, back soon.