Anna dress: By Hand London

Hello hello hello! Here again after a brief hiatus, hopefully I can get through the last of my summer dress queue before moving onto the more wintery items I have on my agenda! Today it's the Anna dress from by hand london

Pattern: By hand london anna dress

Fabric: Falling leaves navy and white cotton voile from  mood (been in my stash a while!) 

Listening to: the audiobook for Neil Gaiman's norse mythology (it was pretty fun)

This dress was a nice, simple little make. nothing too complicated or crazy going on, and I love the fit. I'm a huge fan of kimono sleeves and the print makes it hard to see but the bust gathers in this pattern are very pretty and flattering. I do feel like in this print the dress benefits a lot from a belt- otherwise it just feels like a lot of the same print forever. Maybe I would feel different if it were a bit shorter, so there wasn't just SO MUCH print? But one of the things I love about this dress is the nice knee length. I am 5'10" and one of my favorite things about sewing for myself is being able to make wear garments that are knee length or sleeves that go all the way down to my wrists- unicorns in RTW!

That being said, I did shorten this dress a few inches from the midi length, I didn't think I would wear a below knee length dress that often. I added about 2 inches to the waist- I have made the elisalex dress from BHL before and it was almost HILARIOUSLY short torsoed. I almost always add an inch to bodices but decided to err on the longer side for this one and I'm glad I did! Also- this blog is still new but my distaste for neckline facings is already well documented at this point. I REFUSE. so the neckline is a little higher than it probably should be, because instead of the facing I used navy blue bias tape for the neckline, but I'm pretty sure I did not trim enough seam allowance down before I added it. WORTH IT. I think if I make this dress again, I will put the slit on the side seam and not in the front. I do really like this detail, I think it makes a kind of demure dress a little bit more ~flashy~ but for me it feels like my pasty ass thigh is just out and about more than I would like when I walk, I think a side slit would solve some of that for me. and by solve I mean I wouldn't be able to see it all the time so it may as well not exist, right??

The invisible zip on this one isn't exactly my best work- not really invisible! I think some of that is due to the fact that the fabric is REALLY lightweight, honestly probably too flimsy for this dress but oh well. I had some trouble with inserting the zip. It's not rippled though and the seams line up so a little bit of zip showing isn't the end of the world to me. That being said, I do wish I had used a navy zip instead of the black one I had on stash. I had a navy invisible zip but it wasn't long enough, and hubris got me because I was like, "what does the color matter the zipper will be INVISIBLE BWAHAHAHA" which of course it's not since the fabric doesn't go all the way to the edge.. MAJOR shrug! Looking at these pictures too they're kiiiind of blurry, but moving my couch out of the way so I can retake them is just not going to happen any time soon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess that little guy is just my mood these days. School is crazy currently so sometimes I think you just have to kind of throw your hands up and say I think this is probably good enough.