Whistles Anna
Happy Sunday everyone. Hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine involved a day at the races, drinking cold wine in the sunshine with friends and dancing to silly music. And a bit of sewing which resulted in a finished dress yippee.
So this is my third Anna dress from By Hand London but the first to make it to the blog. My first was to check the fit and made me realise I needed to make some adjustments to the bodice. I tried to fix the gaping back neckline (same as everyone has had to do it seems) which worked and I tried to fix the front neckline from gaping which didn’t really work.
The pleats are so pretty around the bust and I love the grown on sleeves.I actually swapped out the traditional skirt for the Emery skirt. I really love how swishy it is. Everything is just overlocked and sewn on the inside rather than French seamed and I used a concealed zipper. The sleeves are hemmed with bias tape.
My fabric is an ex-Whistles lyocel viscose which you might recognise from Katie’s blog here and here! We both grabbed it from Fabric Mart in Walthamstow when we had a lovely little fabric crawl last year.
And I gotta tell you, it feels so fricking amazing to wear. Why oh why didn’t I buy myself double the amount. The lyocel makes it feel like silk and have the slight sheen similar to the real thing too. What’s more it cost £3 a metre and then I heard through the grapevine that Whistles used this exact fabric for a £110 dress.
Phew. So there’s my dress. I need to get pictures of my first Anna (the star print one you may have seen on instagram) and I need to decide what to do with my recent teal floral one which had a circle skirt (AMAZING) but was a horror to hem and I ended up trimming it indecently short (TERRIBLE). I wonder, do you know anyone with my exact measurements except 5 inches shorter!?
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Delicious! Just a warning, this fabric keep shrinking in the wash… my dress is pretty short/tight now, but I still wear the culottes a lot!
Ooh good to know! I might pretend it’s actually silk and wash on a cold hand wash cycle.
Gorgeous dress. Regarding your teal Anna have you considered adding a contrast plain band to the hem ? If it is a floral then you could pick up a plain colour and add a 4 inch ( for example band ) at the bottom. Might just save it.
Your dress looks lovely and the fabric is great (I want some!!) I have made Anna a few times but like the idea of changing the skirt
Lovely dress. I’m just about to embark on my first Anna in some lovely Liberty tana lawn, so thanks for the inspiration. Holly x
Beautiful dress! I’ve been wanting to make an Anna forever… not sure why I haven’t yet. 🙂
Looks like lovely fabric (the print and the content), I like what you did with it ;o)
Lovely – and what a bargain for the fabric! I want to see your too-short Anna now…I like the idea of adding a band at the bottom to make it the right length, maybe you should give it a go before rejecting it altogether!
Was just going to say you could add a band of fabric to the bottom, seems like someone beat me to it though!! I did this with a RTW dress that I liked, but was too short, now I can wear it yay.
Well done for seeing those adjustments through. Properly paid off to land up with such a lovely dress. 🙂