I had such a fun night wearing this to dinner last week. This fabric just sparkles at night while still being a quasi ‘little black dress’, sponsored by Minerva Crafts.
I did get asked ‘is that a coat or a dress’? Beryl fromNamed is a dress from their ‘Earth Science’ collection. This is a dress and a fun one with this fabric.
I had limited time to make this dress so I jumped into the instructions and found the key piece of information I needed to adjust this pattern. Beryl Bomber dress is designed for 172cm height. That’s really all I needed to check before I swung into adjusting the pattern to suit me.
Ok. I did check the bust, waist and hip measurements so I cut out the 38 size. Keeping in mind this pattern has lots of ease in it because of the bomber style, my main adjustment was to shorten the skirt with the view to recheck the waistline down the track.
There was one Instagram review stating the dress was big so I was comfortable to keep the roominess because of the fabric.
This geometric metallic brocade fabric is gorgeous. Well technically it has metallic fibres so I knew this was going to require as many enclosed seams as possible. I used French seam finishes. My bias binding stash also came handy to finish the centre front seams and hem.
One piece I didn’t used was the front facing. Because I enclosed the centre front seam with bias binding, there was no need to use this facing.
I was a bit befuddled where the dress needs a piece of ribbon to encase the elastic at the waistline. Hence my using a medium weight cotton fabric from my stash for the internal waistband. This is the only part of the dress that is firm against your body so I decided to use a fabric that wouldn’t scratch.
The pattern also recommends using a firm rib knit for the collar. The rib knit from Minerva Crafts is soft and really feels great against my skin. When I sewed the knit to this fabric I did stretch it a smidge to make it curve against my neck. It’s a great collar feature.
When there are external pockets on a pattern I do a simple check on the garment to make sure the pocket base can be reached easily. When I pinned the pockets to the dress, I lined up the geometric design so it sat along one of the geometric lines.
My couture sewing skills swung into overdrive as I thread traced the waistline from the pattern piece.
Once I was at the stage to sew on the waistline casing, it sat higher on my waist line by 3 cm.
This did result in my sewing the base of the elastic casing over the top of the pocket so I’ll have to lower the pocket piece to match my body size.
I had fun making this dress and I certainly had fun wearing it too. Bring on Winter.
I’m so tempted to try another colourway of this metallic brocade fabric for a coat…another time.
velosews 