Make it for Mexico Sewing Challenge: Dress #5, the Sawtell Dress by In The Folds

The Sawtell Dress by In The Folds is the fifth dress I’ve finished for my Make it for Mexico sewing challenge. I am a slooooow sewist and I have been trying to complete a total of seven garments in 24 days for an upcoming trip to Merida, MX for the Dia de Los Muertos festivities.

Because it meets the contest parameters, I am also entering this dress in the Little Basic Dress competition hosted by PatternReview.com , an independent community of sewists from around the world.

A Basic Dress

I wanted to add a solid color dress to this new tropical travel wardrobe. A basic little dress that would be comfortable, yet stylish, and versatile to use for both day or evening wear.

In my pattern hunt, the Sawtell dress really caught my eye. In order to make the most of my sewing time, I was purposefully choosing patterns I figured would be easy to fit well without taking time to sew a test muslin garment. Though the Sawtell dress is at heart a simple loose shift, the thoughtful detailing made it stand out. The inset neck placket with pleats and capped sleeves add an elegance to the front of the dress. The back yoke with box pleat further the sophisticated look of this design.

I normally forego pockets in dresses made of drapey fabric, but the Sawtell dress pockets are structurally supported with pocket shields, and I figured I give them a go. This pattern is size inclusive and is provided with a myriad of size options. I cut a straight size “G” with no alterations.

Materials Used

Fabric: 70/30 Viscose Linen Slub woven in a rich Ocean Blue from the Lyrical Fabrics Etsy Shop out of San Francisco. This fabric nicely blends the sturdiness of linen with the softness and fluid drape viscose. Once I prewashed and dried the yardage in hot temperatures, the lovely texture of the basketweave fibers became even more distinct.

Stay tape: Vlieselene Formband T12 bias tape with integral chain stitch. This tape can be hard to find in the US. I buy it on Etsy.

Interfacing: Featherweight fusible black woven interfacing from EOS.

Bias tape: Self-made100% tie-dyed silk crepe.

Embroidery floss: #5 DMC perle cotton, color #930, almost an exact match for the Ocean Blue Viscose Linen.

Adding a Little Special Something

The inset placket at the neckline seemed a perfect place to include textural interest to this solid color dress. I decided to add a subtle tone-on-tone hand embellishment to the neckline placket. Initially, I planned to do a Ukrainian cross stitch design using 6-strand embroidery floss. But then test sample I made just didn’t read well on the soft viscose/linen. So I switched gears to embroider a more organic, crewel design using perle floss. I based my design on the few stitches I knew how to do – a running stitch, leaf stitching, and lazy daisies with french knot centers. I block fused the neck placket pieces before embroidering for stability.

Sawtell Dress Construction

Insetting the neckline placket perfectly to fit with the pleats on the front is a bit tricky to accomplish. The instructions provided are nicely detailed, and I knew enough to be slow and deliberate in matching points and stitch starts and stops to get the corners to turn without puckering.

This Sawtell dress has a clean finish on the inside. The neckline placket and pocket bags are Hong Kong finished with a self-made silk crepe binding. I also slipstitched the cap sleeves and back neckbinding in by hand to eliminate any machine stitching on the top of the dress.

The Scissor Incident

I was trimming the seam allowance on the second pocket inset, tooling along, thinking about how smoothly the Sawtell dress was progressing when SNIP! Something felt not right.

NOOOOOOOOO! By accident, I had clipped out a chunk of the pocket shield piece and part of the pocket bag!!! Younger Chris would have immediately balled up the whole thing and tossed it into the trash. Older, wiser Chris walked into the other room, took a deep breath and collected her thoughts.The dress was almost finished, with just the sleeve caps and hem to add. I was too far along to let it all go to ruin. I went back to face the problem, and fix it.

I started by cleaning up the damaged area, squaring it up. Then I cut out and interfaced a little patch piece to sew in at the damaged area. I also needed to cut a new pocket bag piece. I was pretty pleased with the result. Though the repaired pocket inset is a scant 1/2″ longer than the other pocket, the seam required for the patch is pretty invisible. Dealing with the Scissor Incident added about 2 hours, but I was happy that I stuck with it. Wabi-sabi – I embrace the beauty of imperfection 🙂

I knew going in that the Sawtell dress would be the most difficult garment out of the seven to sew. I am very chuffed with how this dress turned out. I will be wearing this one for years to come.