Pattern review: Josephine Dress by Violet Field Threads

Do you ever make a project, and stop and look at it half-way through, and begin to wonder if it's really going to turn out as well as you hope it will? That, dear readers, was what happened during the making of this, the Josephine dress. As the sewing on this progressed, I kept the dress on a coat hanger in my room, and every time I glanced upon it I began to be assailed by the fear that Tyger wouldn't end up with a cute dress, but something oddly resembling a 1950's housecoat, which needless to say, wasn't quite the look I was going for!

It just seemed so large. And frumpy. And housecoatey. Thankfully, with the help of some grosgrain ribbon working as a belt, it turned out AWESOME!

Admittedly, it is a little on the big side, but the ribbon helps cinch it in. And it looks pretty darn cute on Tyger, who got loads of compliments on it when she wore it on the weekend. Phew! Sewing failure averted!

Now down to the pattern nitty gritty. As you can probably tell, the pattern runs a little on the large size. That's fine for us, as it means Tyger can wear it again next winter, but if you were making it for a special occasion and wanted the perfect fit right here, right now, then you might want to go down a size and add length as required.

It was a fairly easy pattern to put together, but one thing that slightly bugged me was the fact that the pintucks were not marked on the pattern. Instead, after attaching the ruffled button band, you had to measure and manually work out the pintuck placement for yourself. I'd prefer it to be marked on the pattern itself, as is usually the case.

The other quibble I have is that a pattern piece for the button band ruffles is not included, so unless you carefully read through the entire pattern before cutting out, you might not realise that you needed to measure and then cut out the two pieces yourself. Considering that the pieces required for the larger dress size come in at 43 inches, you'd hate to not have enough fabric, or have gotten rid of your fabric scraps like I almost did.

So my verdict is: cute pattern, but read through the entire instructions carefully before embarking!

Project Details
Pattern: Josephine Dress by Violet Field Threads, size 9-10
Fabric: 1.5m of Raindrops Poppies Platinum from the Field Study collection by Anna Maria Horner
Notions: 15 buttons, 1.5m black grosgrain ribbon, matching grey bias binding