Hello Friends

I am back from a much needed vacation visiting my family and it feels like it’s been ages since I’ve blogged or sewed anything.  I’m only a little bit upset about it, mostly because it just feels like summer got away from me before I got to sew anything summer related. Summer sewing is my absolute favorite kind of sewing and I fully intend to make good use of how many ever warm weather days we’ve got left. So the first chance I got to sew, I chose to make a summer dress.

The Lisa dress by Athina Kakou patterns is a beautiful summer dress pattern meant for woven fabrics. With a fitted bodice and an A line skirt, it has a graceful hourglass silhouette. It comes with a few different options like sleeveless, detachable shoulder ties and scalloped ruffle sleeves like the one I made.

For my Lisa dress, I picked an embroidered cotton fabric from India. It is soft and light weight and was just perfect for this pattern.

Considering how the pattern has waist and bust darts, I was bracing myself for a muslin or two to get the fit right but imagine my surprise when all I did was shorten the pattern and lo and behold! it fit like a glove! how often does that happen?! Needless to say, that added some extra joy to this project 🙂

My current measurements are bust 32″, waist 27.5″ and hips 36″ which based on the measurements chart put me in size 6 for bust and almost a size 10 for the waist. For the bodice, I cut a size 6 blended to size 8 at the waist and shortened it by 1″ at the lengthening/shortening line. For the skirt, I cut a size 8 and shortened it by 3″. And for both the bodice and skirt side seams, I used a 3/8″ seam allowance instead of 5/8″ which gave me an extra 1″ ease overall. I also raised the front v-neckline by 3/4″ which was just personal preference.

I am really pleased with how this bodice fits and I am gonna hang on to this pattern for future woven dress/top hacks.

The Scalloped sleeves are fully lined and the neck and sleeves are finished with facings. I used a cotton poplin fabric in the same color for facings because I was afraid the white embroidered flowers would should show through the fabric. I also avoided pockets for the same reason but I don’t think the fabric or the dress are as see-through as I imagined and it’s a good thing 🙂

Isn’t it interesting how the rows of flowers create straight lines in the front and back and chevrons in the sides?! When I was home last month, my dad picked this fabric for me. I didn’t even care for it much then but I do now! very much!

And because I’ve run out of things to say about this little blue dress that I love very very much, there’s pictures and some more pictures for you to look at 🙂