January sewing

I did some traveling in February, which meant (as usual) I had a minor flurry of sewing in January. Three dresses made it into the “finished” column:

Another Isca, this time in a precious length of Liberty Lantana (the print is called Adriatic).

Liberty Isca front view

I’m very happy with the color of the buttons:

Liberty Isca buttons

And, of course, the piped pockets (that’s a ruler in the pocket — although I am happy to see you):

Liberty Isca pocket (with ruler)

I also finally, finally, made the Tilly and the Buttons Zadie dress that I bought yonks ago and cut out in … 2022? I like the color-blocking:

Tillie Zadie dress front

This is some heavy ponte knit that I bought in Belgium in 2020, and it’s very comfortable; my intention was for this to be a good “airplane dress” for my long flight, but I think I need to tweak the pattern a bit before it’s really airplane-worthy. The pockets need to be deeper, and it’s a little short through the torso for me. I also think the skirt might need to be a tinch longer, as well. It hits me right at the knee, and I think about two inches more would do it.

Sewing the ponte was easy … unsewing the ponte was NOT. When I make this again I’m going to be much more careful, especially with those soft pleats at the front. I got one of them slightly off and, well, let’s just say that it’s still slightly off, and will remain slightly off for the rest of time.

As long as I had my double needle setup handy (and still in need of an airplane dress, because I was still going on an airplane), I decided to make another Cashmerette Turner. (The nice thing about blogging is that I could re-read that last post and make the fixes that I thought I should.)

Cashmerette Turner Paapii knit (hacked)

I admit, I could have taken more care in matching the print at the waistband (because I didn’t take any care, basically). As a reminder, I altered the Turner pattern to have a rounder neck and changed the skirt from a two-piece to a six-gore skirt, to make it easier to add these pockets:

Cashmerette Turner added pocket

This fabric is an incredibly soft, heavy jersey from PaaPii in Finland; I bought mine from an Etsy seller but it’s still available in another color on their website. This stuff cannot wrinkle—I had 20 hours of travel in this dress and it still looked pristine at the end (making the contrast with my travel-wearied body even more apparent). Very comfortable, too!

Here’s the neckband, if you like that sort of thing:

Cashmerette Turner round neckline binding

Three dresses in January seems like a lot but I didn’t sew a darn thing in February (two weeks of travel, then two weeks of recovering from travel). I did buy a reasonable amount (for me) of fabric on my trip, though, so let’s see what happens in March!