Kommatia Going Out Dress

I’d never heard of Kommatia Patterns before I read about them on Fiona’s blog, Diary of a Chain-stitcher. I've been reading Fiona's blog for ages now and she really does have great taste in patterns so I thought I’d better check them out!

Kommatia is run by Jess and her patterns are all cool modern designs that would be great to make for when you’re going out out. There are lots of 80s inspired batwings, slouchy jumper dresses, bodycons and leggings.

I wasn’t intending on buying a pattern but I saw this one and decided I had to have it. I had the perfect jersey in my stash from my recent trip to Abakhan in Manchester (which a whole other blog post! Needless to say I was like a child in a sweet shop).

The jersey itself is a lightweight poly blend with an amazing large scale geometric colour block pattern and the surface is foiled with tiny bits of gold. It was on clearance too so I got a metre and half for about £3! Bargain!

Lovely cheapy cheap fabric...

I made some alterations to the pattern before I cut it out by taking out of inch of length between the bust and waist and adding it back in between the waist and hip. I usually have to do something like this because I have a very short torso and quite long legs (for my height anyway!). However with this pattern I could have easily left the inch in at the top for a slightly more blouson effect. It is pretty short though so I’m grateful for the extra inch I added there.

When I started cutting out I found that there was a large black mark in the middle of the fabric so I had to avoid that while cutting out. I didn’t have quite enough fabric so I really had to squeeze pattern pieces at much as I could. To aid my pattern tetris I cut the wrist section of the sleeve separately to reduce some of the pattern width and seamed it back onto the sleeve during construction which worked pretty well.

The pattern instructions were pretty clear too which was good and the pattern came together relatively well. The one thing I don't really like is the way the top is joined to the skirt because it results in a rather wavy seam which I think looks untidy. If I make this again I’d gather the top onto the skirt instead of stretching the skirt to fit the top (which is what the instructions specified). I’d also probably add a full waistband to the pattern rather than the external elastic casing as I think it would help with the waist seam issues.

I did really like the application of the clear elastic around the neckline though and I’ve since used clear elastic in a few other projects for stabilising knit seams.

Overall though I really like this dress… I wore this on a night out in Leeds and felt pretty damn cool. What more can you ask of your clothes really?

A photo posted by Charlotte Boul (@cboul92) on Feb 19, 2016 at 1:18am PST

I do really like the cross-over back and with a belt, you can't even see that annoying waist seam!

x

Berlin T-Shirt

A photo posted by Charlotte Boul (@cboul92) on Sep 17, 2016 at 7:01am PDT

This is the first thing I made after perfecting my bodice sloper. And for my first foray into pattern drafting I can say that is pretty good. 

The fit is spot on and I've worn it so many times since I made it! The fabric choice really helps here as it's so comfy and soft and goes with so much of my wardrobe AND it had subtle sparkles 😍 

The actual pattern is pretty straight forward. It's a darted, kimono sleeved, T-shirt with side and back seam shaping made interesting by the slit in the front and raw edged neck binding. I used [book] to draft the pattern from my sloper and I used this tutorial [link] to make the placket in the front.

The binding is probably by favourite part. I sewed the binding (a strip of self-fabric jersey) to the inside of the T-shirt neckline and folded it to the outside to cover the seam allowances and stitched it down leaving the edge of the binding raw. I stretched it a bit so it rolled back on itself and just love how it looks. For the sleeve hems I folded the edge to the outside rather than in and tacked in down in 4 places to give a turn-up effect.