There are so many lovely fabrics at Minerva Crafts and this embroidered lawn fabric is a favourite I’ve been eyeing to sometime now.

The fabric is an Italian embroidered floral on a cotton lawn dress fabric. It’s so intriguing that I decided to make it up using The Avid Seamstress Shirt Dress.

The fabric needed a basic dress shape to make demonstrate how amazing the embroidered floral is. The trick for me was to get the proportions right for my height and shape.

The pattern instructions are very clear and I was able to make two test versions prior to cutting into this amazing fabric.

As you can see from this close up of the back, I had to line up the flowers so they didn’t get carved up along the centre back zipper.

You can also see that I lined this dress using black lining. I chose black so the colour of the flowers were more prominent that the cotton lawn base.

If you take another look at the sleeves, you’ll see they are a two-part petal sleeve.

On the sleeve pattern, I drafted the lines for the two-part sleeve. The challenge here was to make sure the sleeve flowers were the same on each sleeve.

Once I marked out the new sleeve patterns I had to cut the sleeves so they looked the same on both sleeves.

Here’s how the sleeves looked one I lined them and then placed each sleeve together before sewing onto the dress.

Here’s a close up of the dress bodice so you can see how the sleeve are balanced.
The other challenge was to make sure the front flower at the waist matched. I sewed in two darts under the bust and to the waist for more shape. You can’t see these darts because they’re sewn between the flowers.

I’m kinda chuffed with the way all the flowers line up. Even across the lower front panel. I used pre-made silver piping to show this seamline.

The hemming took a bit of thinking. I sewed on this bias binding to hand sew the lining into the hem without interfering with the dress fabric.

The finishing techniques helped make this dress look great.

I’m really pleased with this dress. The fabric is amazing. The dress style is easy to sew up. But together, they make a great team with a few couture techniques.

I didn’t plan that this project would be couture, but surprisingly it is.

Thanks Minerva Crafts – for this lovely fabric and for stocking The Avid Seamstress patterns.