I've seen the Tessuti Gabby Dress on a lot of people and it looks SO cute! I love the A-Line shape. It looks so cool, and summery, so of course I wanted one for myself! I wasn't sure the dress would fit so I went into Tessuti and they measured me, and the flat pattern and me were a match! Hooray!
I made a sleevless toile of this dress before chopping into this nice fabric from My-Hung Fashion Fabric in Parramatta (it was about $5/meter = bargain)! Whilst I love the fabric I think it's just too thick for the style of this dress - it needs something more floaty and drapey. As it is it looks like a tent...but it was only ever meant as a test to see if it fits so no big deal.
I'm also not sure if this style suits my figure as I'm quite busty with big hips and thighs. Whilst I love a shift dress, or even an a-line dress in a floaty knit perhaps such a stiff a-line silhouette isn't for me?
Whilst the toile of this dress felt fine without sleeves as soon as I saw the cut out of the sleeves I thought it might be too tight on my upper arms/biceps. I tried to figure out a way of adjusting the sleeves -- to make them a bit more loose and flared but I couldn't wrap my brain around it so the original sleeves went in. I didn't have enough fabric to cut them on the grain which might be accounting for the fact they feel snug under the arms.
As you can seen the sleeves fit me (I couldn't be bothered hemming them) and aren't cutting in on my biceps like I thought. BUT the dress feels too tight...somewhere. It feels restrictive. I can't figure out if the sleeves are too tight under my arms or of the dress is pulling on the upper back now that the sleeves are on.
All of that aside, I'm pretty pleased with the job I did of setting the sleeves. First time, no problems!
Oh, and you can see my knees! How scandalous! The dress is fairly short (I'm nearly 5ft 8') and as I didn't have enough fabric to extend the length I've hemmed it with 3mm bias binding which I'm liking the look of.
I'm not sure if I should have another stab at making this dress - what do you think? There's a bit I want to change - more drapey fabric, make it longer, taper the sides in so it's less of an a-line shape and somehow figure out what's going on with the sleeves. Maybe I should just make it in a knit...my new love!
