Remember when I hoped that if I blogged it, I might do it?  The other garments sewn at Sewjourn were this dress and waistcoat for Clare.

The dress is very simple, but in such a lovely fabric!  The pattern suggested using two parallel rows of shirring to gather the sleeve cuffs, but I used elastic in a bias binding casing instead.  Once I got home and tried this on Clare I had to shorten the sleeves considerably, so in effect I got to practice this technique twice.

The back has an invisible zipper (look closely at the photo above!) and it turns out that Stella did me a favour by losing my old zipper foot – this special invisible zipper foot did an absolutely superb job of zipper insertion.  It’s the best I’ve ever done!  And I even managed to match it perfectly at the back skirt/bodice seam.

The little waistcoat is rather adorable (says me!)  Nikki taught me how to insert the eyelets.   It is fully lined with this fabric, and has darts at the front and back for shaping.  The fabric is a cotton drill.

If only I could get her to pose for a photo with her hair in plaits and maybe some eidelweiss…