Your Style Rocks - Eva Dress

After reading about the Your Style Rocks on Lazy Stitching's blog, I went to take a look, and fell in love with the Eva Dress.

It's size range finished just a squirt below my own, but I was keen enough to want to give it a try.

After taking advice from the ladies over at Pattern Review about the best way to incorporate my needed alterations, I made a trial of the pattern up in a cotton jersey. The fit was pretty spot on, so I went ahead and made it up in a lovely raspberry coloured merino knit.

The alterations I made were to add 1" to the centre of the front pattern pieces to accommodate a fuller bust and a fuller tummy than was originally intended. I also pulled the top drape piece a little tauter than than the under piece it is tacked to, so the pleats were held a little better.

The drape is designed to start at the waist on one side, and sweep down over the opposite hip, which is a nice detail that lifts the design beyond a plain dress. It also has an inverted box pleat in the back that provides nice shaping too.

It is a very flattering design, and was reasonably quick to go together. I think it has the potential to be dressed up or down depending on how you styled it, and it would make a great dress for travel if you were to use a no-crinkle knit.

I'm still trying to figure out how the cowl neck should be arranged, but this seemed the most flattering way on this particular day!

Rock and Roll Shirt

Today is T's birthday, and so the grand unveiling of his 'rock and roll' shirt has arrived!

As I've mentioned previously, T chose the fabric as we were looking around the fabric store a while ago. 'Nuf said!

For the pattern, I used this Bowling shirt  by Scientific Seamstress. These patterns are great, especially if you are new to sewing, as the instructions really walk you through the process step-by-step. If you have a bit of experience under your belt, you might find the 47ish pages of directions overkill!

One part that was really quite well thought out, is that you make your button holes on the placket before you attach it to the shirt, so that if you end up with wonky button holes, you need only cut a new placket rather than a whole new front piece. Fortunately, I was happy enough with mine, so didn't need to do any extra cutting.

The main fabric is a cotton, and the blue lining and contrast is a poly cotton poplin.

Originally I had planned to have the plackets and collar in the main fabric, but when I was doing the cutting out, I couldn't think which way up to cut the collar pieces, so made them in the contrast instead.
Now that it is all made up, I'm quite pleased I made this change, as it looks a bit more, dare I say it, 'ROCK and ROLL'.

The last minute change I made was to change out the buttons. I had picked clear buttons when the plackets were going to be patterned, but these didn't look quite right with the plain plackets and yellow buttonholes. So I found some yellow hands, which T loves - he thinks they are 'high 5' hands. Success!

Final pic is the birthday boy himself, in his new favourite shirt.