Summer Fling dress review by Sew This Pattern

Multi-tier dresses for summer! Yes! Gathers forever! Yes! Low cut back! ...hm. 

I saw a dress in a shop that inspired this dress with its modifications.  The dress in the shop was made with something like 6 metres of Liberty lawn, and cost a hot $700 (very heavy too!)  It had a low cut U back gathered into the bias binding - a thing I didn't even think was possible until I saw it.  

This is the Summer Fling top pattern, with dress expansion, by Sew This Pattern (a company I had never heard of before.)  When I discovered this pattern I thought it would be hackable into a nice version of what I'd seen - a bit less on the fabric use front, but also far more doable and not 10 kg!  I decided not to make a muslin of the original pattern, because I have an aversion to ties.  I cut size 8 based on my measurements, but I think the 6 might have been better. There's a huge amount of ease in this dress creating quite a lot of tenting, as well as a wide cut armscye, and the smaller size would have given a touch more coverage.  As it is I wear a normal bra and it's only visible a little bit on the side front.

To create the U back I basically lowered the curve on the back piece which is meant to go under the tie, and then just extended it into what I envisioned as the U shape, with the bias of the back and armscye  meeting almost at the same spot as in the original.  I was interested in lowering the triangle formed by the bias and the back bodice too but I wanted to keep the bias tape that goes over the shoulders at the same spot rather than changing too much at once.  I cut a little bit off that back triangle, but I ended up attaching the bias without changes - one of the reasons the dress may pull a bit more forward than it should.  I did a lot of pinning of bias and testing before I sewed it together.

I didn't have enough fabric for the bottom tier so this dress is pretty short! I did add pockets, using the Bardon dress pocket piece, which is huge - so this has massive pockets that are barely shorter than the whole dress.  

 The bias taping and gathered front were super straightforward, and this was a really fun and exciting make.  The final effect is absolutely wearable, and in fact I've been wearing it heaps.  The pockets are so big it's like a purse, it's short enough to wear on my bike, and it's possible I've ever worn it skateboarding...

 

The remaining issues are that the front pulls forward slightly.  The balance of the dress probably should be about 1 cm further back - something I knew I was mucking with, and that I wouldn't be able to judge with my first attempt.  The second part of that is that the bias edge of the neck creates a funny hump because it's designed to pull in around the back of the neck, not come out into a wide curved back.  In order to fix that I could give up on the perfection of my vision and do a X back version next.  The other alternative would be to use the bias piece from the front neck to continue as the straps, instead of the armscye piece.  I'm also going to take 1" from the side seam of the back and the back skirts, to see if that helps bring the dress further back and in to my body.  I will have enough fabric for the next version to have the full length skirt, which might also help with more weight to pull the dress into a better balance.  On the whole I'm really pleased with this make.