This is Hawthorn! When Sarai introduced the pattern she mentioned that girls trying it on described it as a “dream dress.” It’s true! This dress has such a flattering cut, yet it sits so comfortably on the body, it just makes you want to dance and twirl (I bet it’s that gorgeous circle skirt!)
Mine is made out of a royal blue Swiss dot from Fabric.com, and underlined with china silk polyester lining, which was a small nightmare to work with, but gave my dress a lot of body. I only underlined the skirt and bodice pieces, and to do this I simply stay stitched them together, then treated them as one piece. Maybe next time I will just sew darts on the main fabric, then use that piece as pattern to cut the lining. The hems are finished by serger, thanks to the knowledge I am getting from Amy Alan’s fantastic Craftsy class, Beginner Serging.
The pattern is beautiful. There are several pieces, but the instructions are so clear that one is never at a loss what to do. One thing I learned from this process, which I had never really done, is to make sure that I really understand and have read the instructions several times. I used to “read while I sewed.” No more! It was so easy to sit down to sew, knowing I knew how to finish. The sewalong posts by Sarai and Rachel were a great help!
I also learned how to use my buttonhole foot with this tutorial from the Five and Ten Designs blog, as well as a little help from my user manual. And, I learned to cover buttons with fabric, here. I love the look for this dress, because it uses 13 buttons, and I did not want contrasting buttons to compete with the texture of the fabric. I really like how it turned out.
I do have a little tutorial for you. This is how I made the sash to go with the dress:
This tutorial was my inspiration, but I made a little alteration to cut only the ends of the sash on the bias, rather than the whole length of it, to save fabric but still achieve the same effect.
I loooove my Hawthorn. Thanks, Colette Patterns, for such a gorgeous dress!!
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