Fella, this is a line i ain't biting. That's a bona fide offer. Well, with a little moonlight and roses...

So you know what this post is going to be about! Unless you have been living under a rock (or at least not keeping up with your sewing blog reading) you'll have heard about Sew Dolly Clackett organised by the fabulous Sarah from Rhinestones and Telephones. Sarah  had the great idea to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of the very lovely Roisin and Nic by making dresses in the style of Roisin herself. And let me tell you, that girl not only has great style and a presumably immense wardrobe/shoe storage area, she always gets a perfect fit and finish on her dresses. I've never seen her in one that looked less than perfect!

Anyway, enough gushing. What's the craic with this dress?

This is my second attempt at Christine Haynes Emery dress.  The first one was a total fitting fail that I blogged about here. So for this I went back to the drawing board, retraced the bodice and made another toile. I got some really helpful comments on my post before which helped improve this one. I lengthened the bodice by 2" and moved the darts down by 1". I did my usual 1/2" FBA.  One area that was a big problem in the previous version was the shoulder width. Based on measuring the previous one, I did a broad shoulder adjustment of 1" and a 5/8" square shoulder adjustment (which I often do).

I'm pleased with the fit. An extra 1" in bodice length wouldn't go amiss but it's pretty good as is!

I used the skirt (extra 2" length) and sleeve (widened by 1" to take account of shoulder adjustment and because it was a touch tight) that I had used before.

I am quite annoyed with the pics though - they were taken in a hurry before work this morning and the dress looks seriously wrinkly which it doesn't in real life.  Damn.

Now for the fabric. This was the hardest choice! How can you narrow down all the possibilities? Roisin says this is why she makes so many dresses! I wanted to reflect her style but also make something wearable for me, and much as I love her pin up girl dresses, they just aren't me! An idea had been brewing in my brain since I remembered asking roisin on twitter to recommend some fabric for a dress. She picked one of the prints from the Michael Miller Ahoy Matey collection for me, I think this one. So the nautical idea was there and a sale on nautical prints at fabric.com sealed the deal!

This is another Michael Miller fabric called My Favourite Ship from the Out To Sea collection.  N absolutely loves it. Of course my dress needs a name, so I asked her and she has called it the Neverland Pirates dress (from the cartoon series Jake and the Neverland Pirates).

I finished this dress with moments to spare due to a nasty 24 hour bug I had over the Easter weekend (that's prime sewing time dammit!). The hem was done at 10pm the night before and I did consider machining down the lining by stitching in the ditch at the waistline.  But then I thought WWRD (What Would Roisin Do?), stuck on an episode of Elementary and hand sewed it down.

Roisin and Nic are such a lovely couple and I'm proud to count them as friends. Wishing them all the best in their future married life together! And I can't wait to see the wedding dress roisin is making!