Red Waffle Dress - FC The Fabric Studio

Hey guys! Lets take a moment to appreciate the 30 seconds of sunshine we had yesterday! Today however it was gone, and I am still waiting for nice weather because it makes taking blog pictures 1000% easier. 

Anyway I'm here today with possibly my favourite dress that I've ever made thus far. This dress was a serious labour of love and I made sure to try and do everything to the best of my ability.

So lets start from the top! The fabric is from FC FabricStudio who were kind enough to get in touch with me a while ago and ask if I wanted some fabric to blog about. And well Momma didn't raise no fool so naturally I said yes! 

I sent a list of fabric I liked from the website and was sent this awesome red polyester waffle and another red floral jersey. Now because they were both red I pre washed them together with a colour catcher [FYI I now do all of my washing with a colour catcher just because it saves so much heartache]. Now the colour catcher came out red but I'm not sure which fabric ran and neither looked different coming out of the wash. So no harm no foul just something to be aware of. 

The websites easy to navigate and the washing instruction for each fabric are really clear which I love. 

They have just under 300 fabrics on the website and they start from £2.00 and go up to £14.00 which is hardly bank breaking now is it? The other thing I love is that all of the fabrics have a great RTW sort of vibe to them. There's no novelty stuff which is great if you want to have a high street sort of look.

Pattern wise I wanted a really classic dress something that wouldn't look out of place in a restaurant but that I could dress down for assemblies at Lil mans school. Naturally I went for the Princess seam bodice from the second GBSB book because I've altered it to fit me perfectly. I added a waistband and spent a good hour umming and ahhing between having a full circle skirt and a box pleat one. In the end the box pleat won because I knew the fabric would hold the shape beautifully. The box pleat skirt is also from the second GBSB book.   

I made sure to press all of my seams really carefully and I under stitched my facings. Normally I line all of my bodices but because the fabric is thicker than a cotton I thought a lined bodice might be a tad warm and well ummm sweaty..... That said I did line the waistband so the seams from the skirt and the bodice would be tidied away. I just trimmed the seam allowances on the rest because the fabric doesn't fray.

The zip is recycled from an old hoody [I really love an exposed metal zip!] and hurrah it went in first time.

Typically I don't make dresses in plain fabrics but I think the waffle texture adds a good amount of interest to something that could end up being quite dull.

So I;m marking this a GRAND success! I love the look of the dress and I love how RTW it seems! And the colour guys! Its just so beautiful I feel like Chris De Burgh should be following me around singing lady in red! 

And I highly recommend the website for finding beautiful prints that aren't to "out there" I've got my eye on this one and this one next!

I have decided what to do with the floral jersey but the pattern needs printing off so I need to wait until Rikki is out of the house so he's not all like "WHY ARE THEIR 40 PAGES COMING OUT OF THE PRINTER!!! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH INK COSTS!" Its much easier we both just pretend that our printer spontaneously runs out of paper and ink.......

Much Love

Frankie

xxx

Disclaimer - Whilst this fabric was sent to me free of charge are waffle loving goodness is my own!