It’s reveal time. Here’s how these dress work on my body.

While the amazing Esme of the Great British Sewing Bee is a fan of the bow, it took this style to make me warm to wearing such a distinct feature for my height ie. short.

Adding a bow takes thought because it really needs to add to the garment and not just ‘sit on top’ like a huge freaking present. However, I would always accept a present that had a huge bow on it, like when you buy a car and the dealer lets you take a photo with a big bow on the front of the car. I have a photo of that somewhere on my phone.

Anyway, while I was making this dress, I was worried about that bow/tie around the waist. My waist is 8 cm bigger than last year so I was worried about how wide the bow/tie would look on me.

The instructions suggest gathers where you attach the tie to the side seams. I pleated the tie into a smaller section of the side seams.

This crepe fabric is a really great weight to make the dress flow nicely and has a wonderful affect on the bow/tie.

I didn’t mind too much with the neckline facing. the v-neckline is a rounded v-neckline. The facing is really wide so securing the facing is a bit tricky when you use a solid colour fabric like this crepe.

My solution was to add 5 sparkly buttons at the v part of the neckline so this dress is ready for an evening occasion rather than a day occasion.

The seams are 3thread overlocked. This meant they were finished before I sewed up the dress. Using 3thread stitched allowed the seams to be finished without adding too much weight at the seams. This also allows me to size this dress up or down depending on what size I am at the time.

I must say that by the time I finished the Minerva Brand Ambassador dress, I was hankering to make a second dress. The fabric for dress #2 is a poly organza with burnt out velvet flowers bought in 2019 somewhere in my travels that year. The flowers are huge so I could take advantage of the watermelon colour as much as I could on this dress.

This time I really had to line this dress so I grabbed a light weight black cotton fabric from my stash to line the front and back of the dress. The sleeves are not lined so they’re a bit more floaty.

Again the bow/tie at the waist had me worried so for a second time, I pleated this into the side seams. Tieing the bow around my waist once and not twice is my preference. This makes the bow absolutely huge. But it’s still a fun dress to wear for fun occasions.

Love a huge bow now.