Pre-pandemic, I used to work in an office with a relatively formal dresscode (think men in slacks or suits, women in pencil skirts or dress paints, hair in a bun). Our office was also right under the flat roof of a big building and we had no A/C (yay Europe!). So it got HOT in summer. We had a rule that if the outside temperature was over 30C (86F) we could have bare arms and bare legs, both men and women. Summer '19 was very hot, so during winter '19/'20 I picked up some linen fabric and in the new year I started sewing a nice new dress that I could wear to the office that summerā¦ Well, we all know how that turned out. I work somewhere else now, we have AC, and this office doesnāt have a formal dress code. So I put this dress away and eventually finished it last autumn, so I havenāt been able to wear it yet but I will. The pattern is self-drafted.
I initially finished the neckline with a facing and topstitching, but after that I lost some weight and had to make some changes to the darts. To do that, I had to remove the facing completely to adapt the bust, and I just couldnāt make myself cut a new facing and attach it all over again. So I finished the necline with bias tape the second time. As you can see on the inside, there are some āflapsā of fabric, that are remnants of where I had initially clipped in the seam when the dress still had a facing. These are pressed flat now and are invisible when you wear it.
The dress is fairly modest because it was meant for work, so the necline hits my collarbone, it reaches my knees, itās not tight but it does follow my figure and my figure is rather curvy. Because my weight fluctuated over Covid, I had to make changes to the darts quite a few times.
Thereās an invisible zipper in the side seam.
The back. As I said, my figure is rather round, which means thereās a lot of space in this dress for my backside, but my upper back is fairly narrow, so there are several darts here. When I buy a dress in the store, itās always shapeless on my upper back, because thereās just too much fabric.
Itās still only slightly above freezing so I havenāt been able to take pictures of me wearing it yet. I thought it would be perfect for Easter (with a jacket or cardigan) but itās still so cold that I donāt think I can.