Hi friends

Are you glad spring is here? I love how everything changes from being grey and dreary to bright and cheerful in just a couple weeks. With all the blooming flowers and blossoms, not to mention the moderate temperatures, this is almost my favorite season of the year (I love summer just a tad more). When I was asked to review the Samantha dress by Athina Kakou patterns, I chose this butterfly print knit (Its an Amy Sinibaldi print called flutterdust knit haze by Art Gallery fabrics) and was lucky enough to be able to photograph this dress along with some spring flowers in the background 🙂

So the Samantha dress is a faux wrap dress designed for jersey knits. It has a grown on sleeve rather than a separate sleeve piece which makes both fitting and sewing just a bit easier. Designed with a beginner sewist in mind, it has some really nice features like a wide neckband with an optional neck collar and a simple flared skirt (with no gathering required). The 3/4 sleeve option also features bow ties at the cuff.

For my version, as you can see I chose the knee length skirt with 3/4th sleeve and bow ties. I usually find fitting wrap dresses a bit stressful and frustrating owing to the number of adjustments and muslins required to get the fit right. And by now, I have sorta figured out at least two standard changes that I need for my body type and those are shortening the bodice and moving the darts closer to the center. For this particular dress, that’s pretty much all I had to do: shorten the bodice at the lengthen/shorten line by 3/4″ and another 1/4″ at the bottom of the bodice. and I moved the darts closer to the center by 1/2″ as well. Having made the Suzy dress from Athina Kakou patterns before, I knew I had to size up on the sleeve to account for my thicker upper arms. These were all simple changes that made a lot of difference to the final fit 🙂

I am pleased with how my Samantha dress turned out and even more happy that I learnt so much about my body type, and fitting and sewing wrap dresses is becoming less intimidating with each one I make.  Considering the fact that we’ll be entering the warmer months soon, short sleeves wouldve made the most sense but the bow ties on the 3/4th sleeves were too cute to miss so 🙂

As far as wrap dresses go, this really is a simple and straightforward pattern with a big impact. Athina explains the instructions well with clear illustrations. I like how it puts a spin on a simple jersey dress with the crossover bodice and the neck collar. So if you’re on the lookout for a simple wrap knit dress, give this pattern a try!

Happy Sewing friends 🙂