Tessuti Lois Dress

When Tessuti released their Lois Dress back in spring, I was pretty quick to decide that it would fit nicely into my wardrobe.  I also immediately knew which fabric was destined to be made into this dress.  I had this lovely rayon crepe that I bought at Cotura which had been sitting in my stash just waiting for the right project and I knew right away that this dress would be it.  I waited for a few weeks to see how many of these dresses would pop up on the internet before hitting the buy now button.  As I suspected the pattern was popular which increased my resolve to buy the pattern.  I had a Christmas function in Auckland to attend in early December so planned this dress to wear. 

After printing and taping my pattern, I got out my tape measure and measured the pattern pieces before deciding on which size to make.  I thought I had it right and my measurements would tend to agree, so I cut into my lovely fabric.

The big issue I had with this dress, was in the difficulty to fit it.  The invisible side zipper is inserted into the dart and the skirt wraps around the dress thus avoiding side seams.  

After making the dress up, I quickly discovered that it was too big.  It really needed to be run in at the side seams.  The trouble was, there are no side seams!  My solution was to take the zip out and do the best I could to make it a little tighter.  I think I sewed in and ripped out that zipper a total of three times.  One the plus side, I got very good at invisible zipper insertion but on the negative side, it still didn't fit as well as I would like.  I got so frustrated, I did something I never do and threw the entire dress in the naughty corner for a week.  Not being one to let these sort of issues get the better of me, I waited until I was in a better frame of mind and had another go.  I managed to get the dress to a suitable fit and got Courteney to help me with the now very wobbly hem.

The finished dress turned out not too bad.  With the hindsight of time I was able to overlook any less than perfect issues and I have worn the dress a couple of times since.  It is too hot at the moment for rayon crepe dresses but when the weather cools a bit, it could even become a regular in my work wardrobe.

Now, after all of that effort I think I deserve an ice cream!