Clare’s fox dress is Simplicity 1787.  This pattern has been in stash for a little while.  It starts at a girls size 8, and that’s what I made in width.  I used size 10 for length, both for the sleeves and the body of the dress.  Clare thinks that the sleeves could have been a little longer still.

I had plenty of black corded piping in stash, so used it to highlight the front princess seams and the yoke. (Yes, it’s a yoke – not a yolk. Sewing spelling pedants unite). Because I was using a stretch fabric I eliminated the centre back zip, and cut the back yoke pieces on the fold without the centre back seam allowance. Clare can get the dress on and off without a zip without much trouble, but if I use the pattern again in a woven I will include the zip. The centre back seam is slightly curved, so retained it rather than cutting on the fold. A little bit of shaping is a nice thing when you are a tween!  The fabric is from Darn Cheap Fabrics, and is the same as Stella’s dress from my last blog post.

Now, before someone else notices, let me point out the lack of proper pattern matching. Yes, I managed to get a line of foxes centred nicely down the centre front piece, but I failed to match the lines of foxes nicely elsewhere. It really needed cutting out as a single layer, but because I was trying to conserve fabric so that I’d have enough left for a dress for Stella, I didn’t pay as much attention as I could. It is annoying me a little, but it’s too late now! And go on, only half of you noticed anyway.

The outer yoke pieces are interfaced, and the facing pieces are not. I did understitch the facing so that it wouldn’t roll to the outside around the neckline, and it is also secured with a row of stitching hidden under the piping around the yoke curve. I must use piping more often – it adds such a lovely detail. One of the other nice details about this dress is the cuffs. There are three tucks at the bottom of the sleeve that bring it in to form mock cuffs. I sewed these with the sleeve pieces flat, so they were easy to assemble, and because I was using a knit I sewed the sleeves in to the body of the dress flat as well. Construction was shared between the machine and the overlocker, with the twin needle coming to the fore again to topstitch the hems of the sleeves and the skirt once they had been secured with Vliesofix. But Clare’s favourite detail has to be the pockets.

See how they sneakily fit into the curved princess seams? This is very much like the Simplicity 2245 Lisette Portfolio dress, and it’s new updated version the Liesl + Co Cappucino dress.  They are surprisingly straightforward to make.  Just follow the instructions!  Actually, that’s possibly the only point where I did pay a great deal of attention to the instructions.  The rest of construction was straightforward and what you’d expect it to be.

This is another pattern that I’ll definitely make again, and it might even be before winter is over! An excellent tween style, in my opinion, and in Clare’s.