Dress Up Party – Pattern Review – Tilly and the Buttons Lilou Dress

This post is part of Dress Up Party. For contest rules, full details, and schedule, please click here!
Today’s post is from Lynne of Ozzy Blackbeard.

Now that Spring is finally here, it’s time to start thinking about summer dress sewing.  Naturally I have lots of dresses planned, but for my first one I thought I’d make my fourth version of Tilly And The Buttons Lilou dress.  The other three arehere, here and here.  This one is closest to the original dress, as it seems that these days I can’t leave a pattern as it is.

I knew I would have to draft the bodice from my block due to my multitude of weird fitting issues, and I really was going to make it as it is on the pattern; but I wanted to try out a boat neck bodice, so that’s what I did.​

I absolutely love how this dress turned out.  The fabric is by Michael Miller, and the print is called Atomic. I love this.  I’m trying to be a bit more experimental with colours, and I think I got that right with turquoise and orange! ​ It’s 44 inches (112cm) wide, which is too narrow for the skirt pattern – the pattern instructions recommend using 60 inch wide fabric.  So I just narrowed the pattern pieces; here’s how I did it.

I folded each skirt piece in half longways.  The corners of the hem and waist wouldn’t match properly to allow them to fold completely flat, so I matched the hem corners together.  Once it was folded flat, I cut along the fold line in the middle of the pattern.  I left a little hinge at the top, and overlapped the hem until the pattern piece fitted onto the width of the fabric, then I taped the join with some masking tape.  This means that I can open it out again to use as the original pattern piece again.

​You can see in the above photo where the pieces are taped back together down the centre.  It throws the shape of the hem out a bit (you can see this more on the top pattern piece which is the skirt front), but it’s easy to even up when hemming. Obviously, this will make the skirt less flouncey than the original, but it’s still lovely and full.

I also lined the bodice using some white cotton lawn; and in a fit of doing things properly, I actually followed the instructions in the book.  I’m glad that I did, because it’s a while since I lined a bodice, and I am particularly pleased with how the bottom of the lining attached to the dress.

So that’s Lilou number four!  I hope you aren’t bored of seeing me make this, but I really do love that skirt.  I have one more planned; I really tried to talk myself out of it, but the fabric keeps telling me that that’s what it wants to be!