CurlyPops issued a challenge: join with her (and hopefully many others) in sewing Simplicity 2059, aka the Lisette Continental dress.  When CurlyPops summons, how can I resist?

With the weather forecast promising a day over 30 degrees, which may be one of the last hot days before autumn really takes over, I quickly paired the pattern with some Amy Butler rayon that happened to be in my stash. After measuring myself and working out how much ease I wanted the dress to have – not half as much as the pattern suggested – I decided to make size 12. I made my usual short torso alterations by folding out around an inch or so at the printed alteration line on both the front and back pieces.  Sticky tape comes in handy at this stage.

Because the rayon was a border print, I decided to take advantage of the contrast edge and insert a vertical feature into my dress. Rather than placing the front pattern piece on the fold, I placed it and cut it out with the centre front on the edge of the border print. After judicious and plentiful pinning, I seamed the two half front pieces together along the edge of the border print.

Rather than using the provided pattern pieces for the neck and armhole binding, I used my rotary cutter and quilting ruler to cut bias strips the same width as the pattern pieces, then ran them through my handy Clover bias tape maker – which happened to be just the right size for the bias strips I needed.

I then cut these strips to the length of the binding pattern pieces. I used some leftover pieces to make belt loops by folding the tape in half and edgestitching the sides. The armhole binding was applied pretty much as per the instructions except I used the fold lines that I’d already pressed into the binding with my bias tape maker as a guide for both attaching the binding to the armholes and for folding it over and topstitching.

The neckline is very nice on this dress. It’s well scooped and the gathers provide interest and bust shaping.

Rather than a simple straight stitched hem, I used the blind hem stitch on my machine. Well, it’s blind enough unless you get very close – which you won’t!  I took a one and half inch hem and it’s only just above my knees.  I know, I’m short.

I made the self tie belt from more of the border. I rarely use belts, but after seeing how good Cam’s dress looked belted, I thought that I’d give it a try too. Originally I was going to add pockets – also inspired by Cam – but with the feature stripe down the centre the dress didn’t need them.

Unfortunately in all these photos my gorgeous youngest daughter kept on clinging to my leg – or trying to. It’s twisted the dress around a little – something that my husband failed to tell me when he was in the process of taking the photos!

I wore this dress today, and it was very comfortable and easy to wear. At first I thought that it was a bit much like a sack with a belt, but I did receive a couple of compliments. The rayon feels delightful on and hangs beautifully.

There’s still time to join in with this sewalong – pop over and visit Cam!

ps – Carolyn – I finally remembered to include more information on construction details!