I finally got round to sewing some clothes for our holiday, although ironically I didn’t use the fabric I bought in London with holiday in mind, I’ve actually used some from my stash!

I looked through my patterns for holiday wear and found a Burda pattern which I think I got at one of the sewing meet-up swaps, it’s Burda 2943, labelled as ‘super easy’ and I have to say it is a pretty easy make.

It’s a midi length shift dress, there is literally just a front, a back and binding strips in the pattern, it’s an over-the-head fit, so no zips or buttons. It looked a nice, easy to wear, everyday summer dress.

I decided to use some cotton I bought at Lucky Fashions in Dewsbury at the last meet up. I bought this in two colour ways as I liked it so much. I think it was called acid etched cotton, the pattern looks very subtle until you hold it up to the light, then you can’t quite believe it’s not see-through! It’s a light weight cotton and it was lovely to sew. I’m looking forward to making a shirt from the white version now!

I had my usual fitting issues of measuring myself, checking the final measurements on the pattern,making it up and then finding it’s far too big. It did cross my mind today that maybe the problem is in the first sentence, ‘measuring myself’, but what else can you do when no one else around sews!

I took it in a fair bit at the sides, so my neat french seams are now a bit chunky. I decided rather than edging with bias binding I would make a facing, I think it made it easier and neater.

Having tried it on and tried to walk in it I decided I needed a couple of slits at the sides, it wasn’t too easy to get a neat finish because of the french seams. In the end I decided to put a triangle at the top of each split, I used bondaweb and satin-stitched round it on the machine. This had two advantages, it strengthens the seam at a potential weak spot and it also covers up a messy top!

I hemmed it just with a simple machine straight stitch.

Apologies for the photos, definitely a bad hair day, this was the best of a bad bunch, hence no full length photo!

I think it’s great as an everyday summer dress, a sort of wander round the market dress,  comfortable, cool, easy to wear and easy to pack for a hot holiday too 🙂