Some months ago Anna set a chambray challenge.  She provided Leith, Rachel and myself with a few metres of beautiful quality chambray from GJs, and challenged us all to make something gorgeous from it.  I believe that Rachel finished hers ages ago, with more than one item from her length of fabric.  After spending a great deal of time to-ing and fro-ing with pattern choice, I have finished mine.

This is the Kate & Rose Roza dress. A few things drew me to this pattern. The description is as follows:

The Roza blouse & dress was inspired by easy, flowing, and sweet peasant blouses but modernized for today’s makers.

The pattern includes three styles: View A has a cropped hemline, gathered front inset and bracelet-length sleeves. View B has a curved high-low hemline, short sleeves and flat front inset. View C is a knee-length A-line dress with flat front and short sleeves. Mix and match hemlines, sleeves and front inset styles to create your own version.

This pattern is suitable for beginners, with detailed instructions and illustrations for every step of construction. The Róza’s front panel inset is also great for embroidering on (one of our favorite things here at Kate & Rose).

Suggested fabrics: light to medium-light-weight fabrics like cotton voile, gauze or lawn, lightweight silk, rayon challis, lightweight linen.

As you know, I rather like a loose sack dress during summer – and summer is coming!  The raglan sleeves also appealed, as did the chance to use a beautiful piece of ribbon that was languishing in stash.  But I have to say that I am not thrilled with my finished dress – which is not the fault of the pattern, by the way. The pattern was well drafted and the instructions were also nice and clear. There were no issues there at all.

I cut this out at a size Large, as per my measurements, but I really should have down sized. It’s too big, especially around the neckline. I often make garments with a smaller shoulder/armhole/neckline size than bust size, and this would have paid off here as well. It stays nicely on my shoulders, but the neck opening just looks too big, especially from the back. It’s better from the front.

The short gathered sleeves are quite sweet, and the ribbon is lovely. The neckline is faced with a strip of bias binding, a technique that I always quite like. This is a fairly easy dress to make and I don’t have any particular construction issues or tips to report.  In fact, I did a lovely job of construction.

I’m not quite sure what to do with my dress. I adore it on the hanger. It’s just not quite “me”. I really do need to improve my visualisations of “Lara in this dress” before I make things, rather than just visualising the dress but not necessarily with me in it! I am toying with the idea of making it a bit smaller, or just wearing it as it is, or passing it on to a friend. What to do? I will probably use the pattern again, maybe for the longer sleeved blouse with the high/low hemline, as I really do like the design! Fortunately I still have some chambray left and the challenge isn’t yet over….Vogue 8805, I’m probably looking at you!