Trina Birthday Dress of Dreams

Hi everyone!

Today I present to you my lovely linen Trina dress which I made for my birthday earlier this month and is my first tick off my 'Sew Five Easy Things' list for this year. It also would have been great to have posted in time for the #SewTwistsandTies challenge, but I was too busy birthdaying with events with friends and family bookending the weekends around the day itself to get photos in time. Such is life!

I made the dress unlined so I can wear with a slip at the moment for my birthday and any other fancy events that come up, but also can float around comfortably in it in the summer. It's made with this Lady McElroy linen, and I think I handled the print placement pretty well, although if I'm honest I'm never really sure if it's going to work out until I actually make the thing!

The combination of a deep jewel-toned background colour and bright summer oranges and orange blossom design (my mum calls this 'Spanish soap wrapper style'!) also give it flexibility for either season in my opinion. I believe orange blossoms are also wedding celebration flowers in Spanish culture so I'll also bear it in mind for any upcoming nuptials I might get invited to! Don't you love it when you can make a special garment that has potential for more than one-off wear?

I've made this dress before for a friend and wrote quite an extensive review here, so won't go into too many construction details this time. What I will say is that this is a great and easy pattern to make, and any criticism I gave of the instructions was perhaps a bit harsh - having that level of granular detail might be really helpful to other sewers even if it didn't mesh with my way of doing things. This time around I found this an absolute pleasure to sew. I also used the pieces full length rather than shortening the skirt and the sleeves, which I did by request for my friend's version (I'm 5'6" and the pattern is drafted for 5'8" but I'm happy with the length).

The only challenge in the pattern itself is making sure you mark all the notches correctly so that similar looking pieces don't end up being attached at the wrong seams, which I confess I managed to do with the skirt panels! That, and of course the gorgeous swish of the skirt means you're handling a lot of fabric and attaching them to quite small bias-cut bodice pieces. Just make sure you don't skip any opportunities to stabilise! It's not hard to put together but has lovely details like the bodice overlap that allow the waist ties to pass through which I just love.

I did however do two things that were a bit foolish and lazy in making this up...

Number one was that I bought this beautiful fabric especially, and then bundled it into the washing machine still folded selvage to selvage, so of course it came out with vertical wash lines down the centre! I've done this to so many fabrics, I don't know why I don't ever learn! It's especially galling when it's a special fabric. I've managed to cut my pieces to avoid the worst of it, but as the skirt pieces are so wide it wasn't possible to avoid it completely.

The second was that as I'd already traced the pattern in my friend's size and it was only a size up from what I'd have cut for myself, I just went ahead and cut my fabric using those pieces reasoning that the wrapover style would make it adjustable to fit. For the most part this is true, and it's lovely having all that skirt to play with, but in all honesty I could have got a better bodice fit with a smaller size. Not a huge issue though - still looks and feels glam to me! Although I cannot work out how to fasten the waist ties neatly...

If you can't already tell I'm pretty pleased with this and have been dreaming of making other versions. Perhaps a plain black one with a self-drafted straight skirt? But in the meantime I'm being good with my 'Five Easy Pieces' plan and have cut out a Zadie Jumpsuit which should be making its way to the blog soon!

Happy making!

NorseOtter xx