Sewing Post: These are two of my favourite things: a gingham dress with ric-rac made by me!

Last weekend I made this gingham dress... As you can tell by the title of this blog post I am rather obsessed with it! I plan on making more gingham dresses in the future using different patterns - I really want purple gingham next!

Anyway... I made this dress using two patterns.

The first pattern is an original 1950s Butterick pattern that I sourced on eBay for the wonderful price of $3! I love the bodice but found the pattern for the skirt section a little tricky and wasn't working for me, so I decided to work with another pattern and join the two!

The second pattern I used (for the skirt of the dress) is a modern Vogue pattern which is quite vintage in style as it features a lovely full skirt.

As the bust on the vintage pattern is quite small I changed the darts around after trialling the bodice on some practice material before sewing the real thing.

I removed the two diagonal darts from the back and made the front darts smaller and shorter to allow more room to move. That was my major change for the pattern and it seemed to work out quite well. I also lowered the neckline which is nice for showing my collar bones and just breaking up all the gingham.

Joining the bodice and skirt worked out rather well, things could have been a little more aligned but I was pretty happy with the result - this is my first time mixing patterns together.

The cuffs on the sleeves were the hardest part as things kept moving and I kept getting frustrated... But it didn't take me too long and I was pleased with how cute they look.

Ric-rac is super easy to sew on so I had fun with that as it meant the dress was almost finished and I was happy to have another dress in my wardrobe.

This dress was a bit inspired by my Hell Bunny gingham&ric-rac dress that I wear all the time and am so obsessed with. However, I have always wanted to make my own dress like this...

I wore this dress out the other day and had Max snap a few photos of me twirling around whilst enjoying the sunshine! It's a nice feeling to wear something out that you have made yourself...
I couldn't help but take a few photos of Max in the sunlight too who was looking handsome as usual.

Well, I am in the middle of moving house at the moment so I won't be able to sew for a while... Or blog! But you can follow me on instagram: @gracefullyvintage or on Tumblr

Thanks for reading this rather long blog post and apologies for the lack of posts too!