You might remember the first garment I sewed as part of my partnership with de Linum linen, where they supply the fabric and pattern of my choice in exchange for a blog and instagram post.  Here’s my June project, finally blogged one week into July!  Whoops.

This is the Style Arc Anais woven dress. It is described as follows:
Long line shirt dress featuring long sleeves, shirt tails, collar and pockets.

Product Description
Shirt style long line dress
Shirt tail hemline.
Easy fit.
Raglan sleeves with fold back cuff.
Inseam pockets.
Left breast pocket.
One piece collar.
Buttoned front.
Slight hi-low hem line

Fabric Suggestion
Washed linen, rayon, crepe, silk.

I chose to sew my dress in De Linum‘s Khaki Green self-check linen. It’s a french flax linen, 143 GSM, and has a beautiful pattern of squares woven into it. Just lovely.

I sewed size 12, but folded 2 inches out of the body length at the shorten/lengthen line. I also did a forward shoulder alteration – very simple in a two-piece raglan sleeve like this. It was pretty much the alteration described here. After wearing this and having seen these photos, I am going to alter the over shoulder seamline to flatten it out a bit. My shoulders are much more sloping than squared, and at the moment there is too much curve along the top of my shoulder. They would accommodate raglan shoulder pads nicely, if that’s your style.  Fortunately for me, removing some of the curve at the top of the arm will be an easy fix.

The pattern page has this dress styled as an outer layer, so I gave that a go and popped it on over a knit jumper, pants and boots, and wore it out for lunch with friends. I really like the look, but linen really isn’t warm enough as an outer layer for Melbourne winter! That said, it opened my eyes a bit to the versatility of a button front, collared dress. Generally I wear my clothes ‘as is’. I don’t really play around with them all that much, and tend to just wear them in the most obvious traditional ways. Maybe I can change that up a bit! There’s plenty of volume as you get closer to the hem, which was nicely highlighted by the wind.

There are side seam pockets. I like the way that Style Arc had me construct the pockets, with one pocket bag sewn to the front of the dress, then the other pocket bag sewn to the first. This is in contrast to the common method of sewing one pocket bag to the front and the other to the back then matching them up when the side seams are sewn. I just think that they sit more nicely done the way that Style Arc suggested, although you do have to be extra careful when sewing the side seams that the pocket opening isn’t inadventently stitched closed.

That long seamline along the shoulder and outer arm allows for better fitting (as I’ve already mentioned, something that I need to go back and do). The cuff can be worn straight, pushed up, or folded back. I interfaced the cuff and one layer of the collar, but the amount of interfacing that you need really depends on the weight of your fabric and the look that you are going for. The metal buttons were from a local op shop – I was very pleased to find them in my stash! Buttons with two holes can be easily sewn on by machine, which was appreciated considering there were 8 of them. My machine has a manual four step buttonhole, so I have to pay attention when stitching. I reckon that I got them pretty even.

This dress is likely to get quite a lot of wear. The colour goes well with my extensive shoe, scarf and necklace collection, and the temperature is appropriate for long sleeved linen for at least half of the year. It’s hard to go wrong with linen.

I have my third de Linum project picked out – can you guess what it is going to be?