A summer dress and a long overdue thank you!

This post is very long overdue, but I hope I will be forgiven.

Way back in July my friend Kate (over at Life at les Sarziers) put a comment on one of my posts ending on the exciting note that she was putting something in the post for me. I love getting parcels in the posts, and surprise parcels are always fun. When it arrived it was no disappointment as it contained this amazing dress. 

Just look at it, lovely colours, lovely stripes and amazing pleat work to make the pockets, its just so pretty. Kate sent me the dress as she thought I would like it and enjoy 'messing around' with it. It has been well loved by her, and (probably) her former flat mate who she thinks have given it to her. It seems I also wouldn't be the first person to make some alterations to it.

I spent quite a while considering what I would do, especially as I really like it as it is. In the end I decided to repair the problems first and then see what the fit was like.

The main issues were in the seams of the bodice. As you cans see they have been re-stitched a number of times, and there are some rips in the fabric. I took both seams apart down to the waist and strengthen them with lightweight interfacing, and then zig-zag stitched over the rips in the fabric to give them some extra strength. This was a bit fiddly because of the stripes in the fabric and needing to work in two colours, but I think it was worth the effort.

Once I had strengthened the edges, I re-sewed the side seams and found the dress fitted really well. Which saved the need for any alterations. I also replaced the armhole facings, did some minor repairs around the pockets, and re-hemmed the dress where it was falling down. 

The biggest decision I had to make was about new buttons - red or white? what shape? what kind? I spent a very confusing half an hour looking at buttons, and then bought both red and white. After much soul searching I finally decided to go with white buttons to do up the dress, and a couple of red ones to accentuate the pockets. The red buttons are pretty much the only changes I made to the dress, everything else was just repair work.

Of course, I finished the dress just as the summer ended in Dublin so I didn't have a chance to wear it. But last week I was in Sardinia for a few days giving me the perfect opportunity to wear the dress.

So, here I am wearing my new (old) dress on my uncle's balcony in Sardinia. Luckily, I had this photo taken before one of my uncle's famous gigantic pasta lunches otherwise I might have been bursting out of the dress. 

So all I can say is a (belated) thank you to Kate for sending me this fantastic dress, and I'm hoping to get a lot more wear out of it next summer!