A cosy spring Lola.

So last week I said I had another dress which is still not a fitted type dress.  I promise I will give one a go soon.  For cosiness and ease of wear it had to be another Lola dress from Victory patterns.  I had made one last year in plain navy sweatshirt fabric and loved it, it definitely got a lot of wear in the winter-spring months.

So for this one I used a patterned wool-type sweatshirt fabric that I had bought in the autumn sale at myfabrics.co.uk.  It is a lovely mix of colours of duck egg blue, royal blue and taupe, with not a lot of stretch but just enough for it not to go 'seated'.  The colours are perfect for spring, I think.

This make was very quick to do as I had made it before.  I had really wanted to use my new overlocker (christmas pressie) but I just could not get the tension right.  After several trial scraps of fabric, lots of dial adjustments and a broken needle later I had to give it up as a bad job.  Very disappointing but I think maybe the fabric was just too thick, so I resorted to my faithful 16 year old Brother sewing machine and the fabric sewed up like a dream.

I love the way this dress comes together and the shaping of the seams is great.  The pockets run from front to back around the side and are very deep.  You could put lots of trivia in there but I don't think bulging saggy pockets would be a great look, but they definitely add a bit of style to the overall look.

I had hoped to use a royal blue ponte for the trims, but just didn't quite have enough, so I used the reverse of the dress fabric which colour-wise tones in very nicely, but I had to stretch it maybe a bit too much especially at the neckline, so it gapes forwards slightly, but a necklace soon flattened it down. I also left off the little triangular detail at the front neckline this time.

If I get half as much wear out of this as I did the first one I will be doing ok.  I have worn it a couple of times and it is so comfortable and cosy.  I think I will probably be making one of these every season and it is casual but I think you could make quite an elegant dressy black version which could be nice with heels too.  I love these versatile patterns, so there are two 'Victories' in a row.

Next up is a run of Merchant and Mills sewing.