When the ombre is blue steel, it’s worth keeping.

What you’re seeing here is New Look 6209 using Minerva Exclusive Minerva Ombre Gradient Cotton Denim Twill POD Fabric Blue Steel fabric remnants.

Let me catch you up…

In 2025 I sewed the two pieces below as part of my Minerva Brand Ambassador projects.

Minerva has a number of Print on Demand (POD) fabrics and I chose Steel Blue on a cotton denim base.

Designer Stitch Pia Vest was my third Pia Vest project (I sew in at least 3s). The skirt is McCalls 8972. Printed in 1997 and this pattern also offers 8 versions in 1 pattern. That’s a bargain.

Here’s a tip.

When you order your Ombre POD fabric, the colour is graded from selvedge to selvedge. This means all sorts of fun figuring out where you want the ombre to sit on your body.

For this double denim ensemble, the dark denim is on the back.

This close up shows you the ombre on the vest with dark blue buttons. I’m wearing this with Designer Stitch Peyton stretch jeans.

So you’d think that’s all the fabric I had left.

Fast forward to January 2026.

I’m cleaning my sewing studio to be able to see the floor again…that’s another story…

In the Minerva fabrics section, there was plenty of the lighter ombre fabric to play with.

I like this look but I wanted a more fitted dress.

This is the dress style I wanted to sew then I dived back into my patterns.

Denim Dress

You know it’s the height of Summer and I really should be out at the beach. On 40C days, I stay indoors.

Denim dresses for the beach are so on trend.

New Look 6209 from 2013 ticked most of the design boxes hence a denim ombre dress. I think there are no ombre pieces left now.

Minerva Exclusive Ombre Gradient Cotton Denim Twill POD Fabric Blue Steel is such a great fabric to use for so many styles.

I’ve been really impressed by the fabric base and of course the colour. Love, love, love Blue Steel.

A bit of piping on the neckline gave the neckline some interest. If you like jigsaw puzzles, playing with the various shades of Blue Steel on the dress panels was motivating.

Lots of overlocking the seam edges are in this dress. The zipper was in my sewing room. I did duck around to The Sewing Basket and found the buttons to absorb the various denim colours for this dress.

I’m all set for the hot nights and fun times ahead.

Room clean up

This experience of cleaning up my sewing studio has kept me thinking about what I have and what can be donated.

It’s such a pleasure to know I have really great fabrics and notions right in my sewing studio.

Any patterns that I used won’t be donated because they’re all cut up and modified for my shape. Unused patterns are being donated out.

Now to pop the dress onto my Instagram account and give Sue, Suzy and Helene a shout out for my very late Denim December makes. They run #SAGAM – Sew A Garment A Month. They’ve been doing this for 7 years!

By the way…

There will be a YouTube video about this shortly.

I’ll also mention this work on Friday Sews this week. The video above is last week’s Friday Sews.