My sewing friends Hélène and Suzy decided we needed to have a challenge this month and after some deliberation the Sewing Therapy Tie Dress pattern was chosen to make. I didn’t own the pattern, so that was the first order of business, and then choosing fabrics came next. If you have never seen the pattern, here are the details:

The dress has four ties positioned at the sides, which can be tied front and back, at the sides or even asymmetrically. There is a round neckline and a V neck, and the dress can be be worn with either neckline at the front or back. The bodice is lined which makes the V very easy to do, I used a piece of very fine shirting for the lining. The bodice is quite short in the waist, but I thought I’d follow the pattern, rather than making it longer.

There is a short sleeve option which is a bit like a cuff, or a long sleeved option which is elbow length with an inverted pleat detail at the bottom.

In seam pockets are included but Sara recommends not using them as they can interfere with the way the skirt hangs. I put a patch pocket, which is on the front or the back, depending on which way I wear the dress.

A neat feature of this pattern is that you can choose to print from two versions. One is the full pattern which consists of 36 pages of printing, the second is 20 pages, which excludes the side panel, sleeves and ties. Measurements are provided for these as they are just rectangle. I did this as I love to save paper and ink!

It’s winter here and this seems like a bit of a warm weather dress, so I decided to look for fabric that would cross over to cool weather, perhaps by layering the dress. After a serious look through the stash I found a couple of pieces of indigo dyed fabric. The bodice is a scrap of damask tablecloth and was dyed on a pole, and the other is a piece of cotton which was just scrunched. I had always thought I’d do some discharging and turn parts of the fabric back to white, but hadn’t got round to it, so it looks plain blue although it has a lot of patterning.

I then had to choose a size. I didn’t want the dress to be too big so went down a couple of sizes. The dress came together really quickly, the instructions really are excellent.

You can see that I used the pole dyed indigo for the bodice and the scrunch dyed fabric for the skirt, sleeves and ties. I had planned to discharge some of the dye from the big piece, creating a different sort of design as I felt that the fabric was a bit boring like this. I’m rather pleased that I didn’t now. If you aren’t a dyer, discharging means that the dye is actually removed taking the fabric back to white. It can be done with a stencil or the fabric can be wrapped – like dyeing in reverse.

I turned the dress around to have the V at the back, which gives me access to the patch pocket.

I’ve been playing with the way the dress is tied. I don’t really suit a wrap dress and I felt that tying it in the front might make me look like a sack of potatoes, but I gave it a go.

Tied at the front, which shows how stiff my fabric is. It goes into a pleat but could fall more softly if it was a drapier fabric.

I had a play around with layering the dress, which I think worked well. I wore a blue merino tee shirt made from an old Knitwit pattern. it seems to work well with the dress. A couple of action shots, with me going about my day. I actually wore the dress out and about, so it’s nice to know that it works well on a mild winter day.

I really enjoyed this challenge and feel as though I have a stylish and useful dress, which I’m sure I’ll wear often. I am so looking forward to making a proper summer version, but that may be a little way off!

Finally, I thought I’d upload some photos of Miss G playing with my fabric scraps. We were supposed to be doing educational things like sorting by colour and size, but it was clear that they just needed to be rolled around on! I am using a slideshow so scroll through if you like.