Anna Dresses - Winter and Summer

The Anna dress by By Hand London is a kimono sleeve, boat neck/slash neck, dress pattern with two skirt length variations with a thigh-high slit option on the full length version.

I made a full length version first from a lightweight cotton that is perfect for Spring and Summer events. Actually, both myself and my sister have worn it to different weddings - one formal, one cocktail - and received lots of compliments! So it's very versatile too!

The fabric has a really fun but subtle print due to the colours being muted the weight of the fabric made it really forgiving to sew and wear. I made this in Spring 2016 so I will try to remember all of the construction details and challenges.

Fit adjustments round 1:

There was some serious gaping at the back of the neck, so I had to take out about an inch on either side of the zipper, tapering down to nothing at the waist.

I also found the finishing of the leg slit tricky - it's very long so I didn't want to do it by hand (lazy) so I tried to use the blind hem stitch on my machine but it wasn't really pretty. I think with practice I can do better.

I'm pretty short compared to the fit model for this design so I had a wide hem that I hand stitched down. I think this also added some needed weight to the skirt so it would hang better.

Anna Dress number 2

To try and solve the "I can't zip this up" issue I reduced the second centre front dart to be the same width as the other one which gave me about an inch extra room in the front, and I reduced the back dart as well. So it fits at the waist now, and weirdly the skirt portions were the right width, so I don't know what I did wrong there. But it's still visibly tight over the upper bust. This is extra annoying because satin already shows off every bump and ripple underneath so having it be too tight is a pretty unflattering.

I cut out the same size for this second one, which was turns out was a mistake since I was a little skinnier in 2016 and I ran into some serious fit issues when I went to sew it up. The satin also has very little give, so more ease would have definitely been beneficial.

Fit adjustments round 2:

The try and solve the "I can't zip this up" issue I reduced the second centre front dart to be the same width as the other one which gave me about an inch extra room in the front, and I reduced the back dart as well. So it fits at the waist now, and weirdly the skirt portions were the right width, so I don't know what I did wrong there. But it's still visibly tight over the upper bust. This is extra annoying because satin already shows off every bump and ripple underneath so having it be too tight is a pretty unflattering.

I also decided to make the back a v-back because I only had a short zipper... this was not super successful and the facing was flipping out all night. I think I cut it too low, maybe a facing that goes down the waist will help keep things in place?

Did I mention I decided to make this dress the same day that I wanted to wear it to Adam's company Holiday party? Yes, every sewist out there has done this I'm sure.