Finally, a recently sewn garment!  I’ve finally moved photos from my Mac to my new PC, and things are starting to get back into the groove.  Changing computer platforms is not a straightforward business!  Anyway, on to the sewing.

This is the Lucida dress, by the Friday Pattern Company. It’s often hard to choose patterns for teens and tweens, but this one was right up Clare’s alley. From the website: The perfect dress helps you look and feel good while still being comfortable. The Lucida has that in spades. This cute little dress features cap sleeves, an adjustable tie at the neckline, and a slight a line skirt. It is a great year round dress that can be worn when the weather is warm, or paired with tights and boots when the world cools down. SUGGESTED FABRICS: This pattern is designed for knit fabrics with at least 10% stretch. For a more casual look go for a nice jersey knit. If you want to jazz it up, go for something with texture like a stretch velvet (pictured above). If the knit has a bit of drape in it (a bamboo or rayon knit), it will give the dress nice movement and weight. 

My fabric choice was completely influenced by the modelled dress on the website – it is in red stretch velvet, and I knew that I had some lovely stretch velvet in stash and hoped that I would have just enough of it to eke out the pieces for this dress.  As you can see, I did.

The front bodice is fully faced, which allows for both a lovely finish to the V-neckline and enables channels to be sewn in the centre to thread the drawstrings through. I used a lightweight jersey for the facing rather than attempting to double layer the stretch velvet.

My biggest dilemma was what size to sew. I started off by cutting the smallest size, graded up one size at the waist, but ended up not only removing the grading but also running the bodice in another 5/8″ down each side seam, effectively removing two and a half inches from the total circumference. I’m glad that I didn’t attempt sewing this dress without Clare present to try it on at each step. Trying it on as I went was also useful when it came to fixing pooling at the centre back. She popped it on inside out, I pinned out the excess (effectively doing a sway back adjustment – Clare is like me and has a short back waist length, but she has a perkier teenage bottom) then I was able to resew the back waistline seam. It’s really improved the fit.

The front bodice drawstrings allow for the neckline and bodice ruching to be adjusted to personal preference. The neckline isn’t too low, and the skirt length is just right for her too.

This dress seems to tick all the teen boxes, and it’s already destined to be worn to an upcoming sixteenth birthday party. It ticked plenty of boxes for me too – easy to sew, easy to alter, clear instructions. It’s a winner!

And let’s not forget – the matching scrunchie from the leftovers!