Vikisews Oona dress

Pattern: The Vikisews Oona dress. I bought it in English with a discount code from their Etsy shop – it appears to be on sale for just £5 at the moment too.

Fabric: A stash mystery! It’s a very lovely weighty, drapey off-black cloth with a bit of slub and I have no idea where it came from. I’d say some blend of tencel/linen/rayon if I was guessing. I had the perfect amount for this dress so calling it fate.

Pattern notes: I umm’ed and ahh’ed over this pattern for a bit: I’ve been looking for variations on midi/milkmaid styles but was a bit concerned that the plunging front was out of my comfort zone – but I reckoned that if I offset that with a sombre colour and matronly length it’d work out okay.

The pattern was initially intimidating, with a lot of steps and fiddly little pattern pieces. But once I got going I realised there’s nothing to fear. Essentially every edge is either hemmed or faced with an elastic casing (elastic lengths are all provided) and there’s quite a sensible order of construction to get nice neat edges where all the pieces abut. The instructions are excellent, very thorough but no extraneous info either (honestly I love being told which side to press seams to), and clearly photographed. The only variation I made was to French seam everything, which was a bit tricky with a 1cm seam allowance but I got there. Everything fitted together like a lovely scrunchy puzzle and it’s so neat and tidy inside and out.

Fit notes: I made a 38 in 158cm height. Before attaching the skirt I checked the fit of the bodice and reckoned I needed to pull all the bodice elastics a bit tighter to help everything stay in place. This is quite easy to do at this stage provided you don’t baste the elastic ends in place too enthusiastically, so I definitely recommend it before you seal everything up once the skirt goes on. I took an inch off the skirt length and gave it a deep blind-stitched hem. I think the size down might fit better with less ruching, but I guess the effect is supposed to be blousy.

Thoughts: I really like it! It feels comfortable and secure and not like I need to mess around with it all the time. Going braless feels fine in this weightier fabric with the tightened elastics. I want to make another one, perhaps from one of the fun prints in my stash, and perhaps hacking the bodice to give more coverage like this lovely one on IG.

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