Tape Measure Lilou Dress

I'm currently sat in my dressing gown after being evicted from my bed. To cut a long story short I took a sleeping pill last night because I haven't been sleeping well so you can imagine my delight when lil man woke up at 6.00am this morning. Naturally he has since fallen asleep in our bed so I've been regulated to the settee.

Anyway I was going to write this last night but the lap top threw a dizzy fit and I spent the night nodding intelligently whilst Rikki muttered about IPs and Wps and Connectivity........ Literally didn't understand a word............. And the swines just popped down stairs to disturb me and left a guinea pig on the floor!

But anyway here's what I'm actually here to post about! 

So its a basic lilou dress from tilly and the button "love at first stitch"! But on the plus side I found all of the details of the alterations I've made hidden in a notebook down the side of the sofa! So I only work using the bodice block and tend to wing the skirt portion depending on how much fabric I have. But on the bodice block I originally traced a size 3, but since then have take about 2cm out of the top of each strap [front and back bodice piece] and widened the darts on the front bodice by 0.5cm and widened them at the back by 1cm and that's it! The fit is pretty banging if I do say so myself! 

The fabric is a cotton? that I got from abakhans [Sorry I cant find it on their website guys!] It came in this sort of greys and red colour way and a more muted beige colour way. I decided I like this one better but I know for a fact it also comes in a pink and orangey colour way and I've got my eye on that one next!

It behaves as you expect from any cotton really. Which did sort of remind me how much I love working with cotton! after sewing with knits and floaty fabrics so much recently the idea of using a fabric that actually behaved itself was quite novel! 

The zip is also from abakhans and came out of one of those £1 assorted bags of zips. Its an open ended zip so I stitched about an inch about the bottom so it can't come undone. This zip is also one of the neatest I have ever done in my entire life! seriously for an exposed metal zip its just so pretty!

I brought two metres of this and did some pretty crafty cutting to eek out this dress, I also went for a slightly less full skirt mainly for practicality reasons! I learnt in Vegas that the fuller the skirt the more likely a gust of wind is the flash your knickers! So the skirt is 20inches deep and I'm not sure how much across? But lets put it this way I have enough left from my 2m to make a skirt aswell! #winning 

The bodice is lined, and I sewed the hem by machine, which is pretty unusual for me as I usually like the hand sew my hems! This change of heart was because I wanted to finish the dress before I had to pick up little man from school!

Anyways I actually made this dress a little while ago when I was fed up of the miserable drizzle we were having and I thought a summer dress might encourage the sun to come out! The next day it snowed.............So yeah I guess you can blame me if your car got stuck!

Much Love

Frankie

xx