Petunia summer dress

I’ve been eyeing this pattern for about a year now. Last summer none of the fabrics I bought “told” me it wanted to be this pattern so I let it be (don’t fabric and patterns “talk” to you sometimes? They sure do to me!). But then in the fall I got this lovely cotton flower print on ebay. All I needed was a mathing fabric for the second ruffle and since I didn’t want to wait another year for another print fabric “talk” me into sewing it up as that ruffle, I just took the plain part of the Kerttu fabric.

Now to the instructions and the construction. I didn’t really read the instructions, to be honest, I just used them to know what piece I was supposed to be working on next, and didn’t have any problem. So I guess this means this is a straightforward pattern, although I wouldn’t rate it as a beginner’s pattern. When sewing the lining ruffle, I totally lost sight of the fact that the lining hem and some of the side seams show so I did it like a regular lining i.e. wrong sides to the outside of the garment. I noticed as I was removing the gathering thread… grrrrr. I had to rip the seam, re-gather and resew the whole thing with the skirt outside out:

I sew a button on the neckline to hide a joining seam on my neck bias. I like how it draws attention to the pin tucks (and if you think it also draws attention to the less-than-perfectly applied neck bias, you’re right but I couldn’t care less :P). Speaking of pintucks, look at them, what do you see?

Or should I ask, what don’t you see? What you don’t see are backstitches at the end of them. Because I experimented and followed a tutorial on how to sew with the spool. Brilliant.

And speaking of bias, I recalled having bought a bias gadget and managed to find it in my unorganised sewing  notions. I used it for the neck bias and now think I couldn’t leave without it. I might just buy it in all available widths:

You pull your bias band through the thing and it comes out folded on the other side. You just slide your iron on the band and tada there you have it!

But now back to the dress, which DD says is a princess dress:

After trying it on, she somehow found this large grosgrain ribbon (now you know why my notions are unorganised; DD likes to look through them…) and tied it as a sash:

I’m going to ignore the fact that DD is attracted to anything pink, i.e. that all the items that match her taste (the dress and the ribbon) will inevitably match, and just allege my daughter has a natural sense of style, ok?