Abbey 3.0 Wishlist Item 1 – The Maxi Dress

I started the ball rolling for the Abbey 3.0 Birthday Sewing Challenge with The Maxi Dress. As a wardrobe staple, it is a must sew, just for its simplicity and its elegance. It can be worn daytime or night time. It can be worn during the cool spring or the hot summer. It can be worn with a cardigan to keep it casual or with a jacket to look more fancy, formal or even work-appropriate. And as long as it is designed to suit your body shape, it can be most flattering. These were some of my inspirations for my maxi dress:

1. Mimi G. – T-shirt Maxi Dress is just GORGEOUS!! BTW… Mimi is simply freaking AWESOME!!
2. At Second Street – Maxi Dress Kalleen’s dress is made with a simple raglan tee pattern with elasticized neck and sleeves
3. Sweet Verbena – Boho Maxi Dress is probably the most viral maxi dress tutorial online!
4. Made It On A Monday – Sunshine Poured Out Maxi Dress is so cute, even maternity-sized!

And don’t even get me started on all those striped and chevron maxi dress that were all the rage this year!!! I so gotta make one of those too! But I digress…

The very basic idea was to use an existing shirt that fit me well and that I liked. So I took one of my favourite sleeveless shirts, turned in on the wrong side, folded it in half and traced it onto some pattern paper. I did this for both the shirt front and back and marked the pattern pieces appropriately. My shirt fit just above my hips and was fairly fitted from the bra line down so that was easy.

Then I took my long maxi skirt and did the same process as with the top. This was a bit tricky as there were some adjustments to make at the hip and my hip curve came in real handy to get the pattern lines all nice and smooth.

Deciding on which fabric to use for any sewing project is always a task for me. TMCD (Too much choice dilemma). I always buy like 3 or 4 fabrics I like for the project and then spend weeks and months debating on which one to choose. This obvious procrastination only ends up increasing my fabric stash and not my wardrobe because by then I’ve already moved on to another sewing project, i.e. the creative individual’s curse…

However, for this my first maxi dress attempt, I knew I was going to use this multicoloured chevron print lycra that I had bought last December to make my high school reunion dress (a future refashion candidate for sure… a pencil skirt perhaps?). So I placed my new maxi dress pattern on the fabric, cut out the front and back on the fold, and stitched the whole thing together with the serger, including the hem. What do you think of my Chevron Multi Maxi Dress?

Not bad, huh? I wore it yesterday to my god-daughter’s fifth birthday party at Brown’s Beach. Yes, I went to a child’s party totally posing… My son very happily got to frolic around in the surf and take in sand in his pants, while I cut styles. A fair trade, I believe. Of course it helped that the fabric was water friendly and would dry quickly should need be and accidents always seem to occur with boy children around…

Oh wait. But how could I forget the finishing touch? Another first with this particular project was the self-fabric bias tape necklines and armholes. I had never done that before, not once, and here I am trying a thing with stretch fabric! And it didn’t come out half bad. I’m quite proud of my first go at it and there wasn’t even all the puckering that first timers get. Yay for me!

Abbey 3.0 Birthday Sewing Challenge Status: Project 1 completed!

On to the next one!