Dancing with Sugar Plums

Geez, Trice another post? I must be on something, right? The day has finally come. I get to share with all of you another secret project.

Enters Lolita Patterns‘ Sugar Plum. I was one of the lucky women to be a pattern tester for their new Sugar Plum dress. I love clothing that are mixed with woven and knit fabric, so I was very much looking forward to making this dress. Early June, a request for testers were sent out and I hopped on right away to be a tester. I knew this dress would be perfect for my work wardrobe.

Sugar Plum is a dress that looks like a shirt tucked in, how awesome is that! Plus there are ruffles. Despite the fact that I am a tomboy at heart, I love me some ruffles. However, due to time and my skill level, I decided to go with View B. I have never mixed woven and knit fabric before, or made a rolled edge hem with my serger (yay, to new skills aquired), plus I was not sure if I had enough fabric. So yeah, no front ruffles. I used fabric already in my stash for this pattern, the only thing I purchased were the buttons. Go me!

Whistle while you work, or slip out of work

I definitely knew I was not going to get away with making this pattern without making a muslin. I would like to note that I did not do a FBA for this pattern and the only changes I made to it, was adding 5/8″ to the front and back side seams after the side notches. Next time I will definitely do a FBA using a size 10. While I am at it, I will probably throw in a forward shoulder. I am pretty happy with the fit in the back, except for one part which I will go into later.

Did you notice? This dress comes with pockets, who does not love pockets? I walked around all day with my hands in my pockets, most of the pictures in the photo shoot has me with my hands in my pockets. I was supposed to line it with the lining fabric, but I decided that I wanted to use the contrast fabric (skirt fabric) as my pocket fabric.

Dress in Action

So like I said earlier, most of the fabric and notions I used to make this dress I had already in my stash. Yes, I so happened to have a 22 inch zipper, yeah I don’t know how that happened. The only thing I had to buy was the buttons, which I love. They are a pearl-like button, wish works perfect for this dress (sorry for the lack of close-up). The fabric I used for the top half is the same I used for the Sorbetto Top. I think its a poly silk.  The contrast/skirt fabric is a double knit that I have tons of.

Sometimes a gal needs a break from shoes

Despite the fact that this dress looks great on my curves, there is a little bit of an horror story that goes along with it. You see, the back is supposed to have an invisible zipper, but the zipper is not that invisible, especially in the contrast skirt. The reason being… I am actually hand-sewn into this dress. My invisible zipper foot gets so close that at times it stitches into the teeth and that’s what happened and I broke the zipper. During the day the little spot that would not zip just got worst and since I needed to take pictures of the dress, I could not hide my exposed back behind a hoodie, so I had my coworker sew me in since we could not fix the problem. I know, complete Face Palm, but doesn’t this dress look great on me?

I know I should take the zipper out and re-install a new invisible zipper. However, I am lazy and scared to remove a zipper since it is fully lined and the fabric is delicate. We shall see, it would be a shame not to wore the dress again.

Lolita Patterns will be having a sew-a-long for the Sugar Plum dress at the end of the month, Everyone should check it out. I know I will be following along.

I want to thank Lolita Patterns for giving me the opportunity to test this lovely dress. One of the things I love about Lolita Patterns is their sizing. These L.A. Pattern Companies (Lolita Patterns and Christine Haynes) are stalking me, I am convince. ;) The size is on point with my own measurements, give or take what I might eat on a given day. Lolita Patterns also has two size range (2-14) then (16-24) and they are not just using the same block for the larger size. This is really smart. There is a brilliant post about it here.

Now go and purchase your own Sugar Plum pattern, here. Especially since they are having at 15% sale (on physical patterns) until Oct 10 PST. Sale code is sugar15plum

Happy hour and dancing friendly