Deer and Doe Bleuet

Let's ignore the undecorated state of my landing, it's the brightest spot in my house!

A quick whizz back through my old posts reminds me that I cut out the pieces for this dress in January, I finally sewed it up in a couple of days at the end of April.  Out with slow fashion, I'm bringing in slooooow fashion!  To be fair there was a new family baby announced shortly after I cut out the pieces so I've been preoccupied with a slightly epic blanket (more on that soonish) but I'm sad it took me so long to sew because I flipping love this thing.

The pattern is Bleuet and as I mentioned in the January post this is a new version of an older pattern which I'd really been on the fence about.  The updated version kept the elements I loved- the bow at the back especially and changed the features I wasn't too sure about - the sleeves and the collar.  This time I opted to sew the view with cap sleeves but I can definitely see me sewing a sleeveless version too. The sleeves are lined by folding the piece in half, so lovely and simple to do and they look really pretty.  The collar is a 'proper' collar with a stand and after having sewn a fair few collars in my time I can say that I much prefer to sew collars with stands.

Sewing this dress was really simple, no dramas at all.  The bow was really easy to attach and everything else slotted together perfectly.  I'll admit to not really enjoying sewing on 14 buttons, I didn't bother with the one on the collar stand because I'll never do it up and next time I'll probably leave off the 2 below that now that I know I don't do those up either.

The fabric I used is a lovely print cotton I've had for a little while.  I originally was going to make a Sew Over It Vintage Shirt Dress with it but the fabric was too narrow for the skirt pieces.  I like that I have made another shirt dress with it and I'm really happy with my fabric/pattern combo on this one.  I did end up having to cut the hem facing, under collar and inner collar stand from scraps of black cotton due to said narrowness of fabric so I didn't quite get this dress out of 2m but with wider fabric I'd have had no trouble.

Overall I'm really pleased with this dress and I can't wait to make another - I just need to teach Cassie to sew on buttons first!