Tabatha Tweedie

Love Sewing Magazine: Simple Sew Brigitte dress Sewalong

So, last Thursday the 24th April 2014 saw the launch of a new British sewing magazine called ‘Love Sewing’, and with it comes a free download for a Simple Sew pattern: the Brigitte dress. Simple Sew and Love Sewing asked me to run a sewalong to give some extra online help to anyone who decides to make themselves a Brigitte dress.

The Brigitte dress is a classic tunic shift dress – easy to make – and, hopefully, easy to fit. As the instructions indicate, it ‘can be made in lightweight fabrics for casual holiday/daytime wear or perhaps in heavier, more luxurious fabrics for office and formal wear’, so, you could use cottons, jersey, silk jersey, light to medium weight knits, or suiting fabric.

For the purposes of this sewalong I will be making my dress with a medium weight cotton, because this is the easiest fabric to work with in my opinion. It behaves itself very well, it’s easy to cut, easy to control and doesn’t stretch all over the place.

The fabric that is shown above and on the front cover of the magazine is a striped polycotton from Minerva Crafts and is a steal at £2.99 per metre. The only thing to be aware of with this fabric is that the cutting layout is different to the one given in the instructions; it is cut on the cross grain. I’ll go over that in more detail in the post about cutting out fabric.

So, if you’d like to follow this sewalong, that’s great! I’ve been asked to run the sewalong over the space of a few weeks, so I’m going to give you a chance to source your fabric first and pre-wash it before we start cutting. Here is my proposed itinerary:

Friday 2nd May: Assemble your printed pattern

Tuesday 6th May: Cut fabric and transfer markings

Thursday 8th May: Sew the darts on the dress front and dress back pieces

Saturday 10th May: Stitch shoulder seams and assemble and attach neckline facing

Monday 12th May: Insert sleeves

Wednesday 14th May: Sew side seams

Friday 16th May: Insert zip

Sunday 18th May: Finishing the dress – hem etc

Tuesday 20th May: Reveal of finished garment(s)

I hope this sounds ok with anyone proposing to join the sewalong. Feel free to jump ahead and whip yours up quickly, just check back if you need any extra tips! I will try to answer anyone’s questions throughout the sewalong – just leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

So if you are going to join in, then your next job is to go and buy yourself some fabric and pre-wash it so you are ready to go. Here’s a little peek at my fabric…

Sneak peek at the cotton fabric I am using

See you soon!



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