Love Sewing Magazine: Simple Sew Brigitte dress Sewalong
So, last Thursday the 24th April 2014 saw the launch of a new British sewing magazine called ‘Love Sewing’, and with it comes a free download for a Simple Sew pattern: the Brigitte dress. Simple Sew and Love Sewing asked me to run a sewalong to give some extra online help to anyone who decides to make themselves a Brigitte dress.
The Brigitte dress is a classic tunic shift dress – easy to make – and, hopefully, easy to fit. As the instructions indicate, it ‘can be made in lightweight fabrics for casual holiday/daytime wear or perhaps in heavier, more luxurious fabrics for office and formal wear’, so, you could use cottons, jersey, silk jersey, light to medium weight knits, or suiting fabric.
For the purposes of this sewalong I will be making my dress with a medium weight cotton, because this is the easiest fabric to work with in my opinion. It behaves itself very well, it’s easy to cut, easy to control and doesn’t stretch all over the place.
The fabric that is shown above and on the front cover of the magazine is a striped polycotton from Minerva Crafts and is a steal at £2.99 per metre. The only thing to be aware of with this fabric is that the cutting layout is different to the one given in the instructions; it is cut on the cross grain. I’ll go over that in more detail in the post about cutting out fabric.
So, if you’d like to follow this sewalong, that’s great! I’ve been asked to run the sewalong over the space of a few weeks, so I’m going to give you a chance to source your fabric first and pre-wash it before we start cutting. Here is my proposed itinerary:
Friday 2nd May: Assemble your printed pattern
Tuesday 6th May: Cut fabric and transfer markings
Thursday 8th May: Sew the darts on the dress front and dress back pieces
Saturday 10th May: Stitch shoulder seams and assemble and attach neckline facing
Monday 12th May: Insert sleeves
Wednesday 14th May: Sew side seams
Friday 16th May: Insert zip
Sunday 18th May: Finishing the dress – hem etc
Tuesday 20th May: Reveal of finished garment(s)
I hope this sounds ok with anyone proposing to join the sewalong. Feel free to jump ahead and whip yours up quickly, just check back if you need any extra tips! I will try to answer anyone’s questions throughout the sewalong – just leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
So if you are going to join in, then your next job is to go and buy yourself some fabric and pre-wash it so you are ready to go. Here’s a little peek at my fabric…
Sneak peek at the cotton fabric I am using
See you soon!
Trackbacks
- National Vintage Awards 2014: Vote Mancunian Vintage for Best Vintage Blogger | Mancunian Vintage
- Simple Sew Brigitte dress Sewalong. 1: Assembling the pattern | Thread Carefully
- 2 x Brigitte–The Dress and the Scarf | Sewing Adventures In The Attick
- Sew Your Own Wardrobe - Brigitte Dress Reveal | Boldly Gold
- The Minerva Meet-Up…and my evening dress! | Thread Carefully
- Top 8 Favourite Free Patterns | The Rabbit and The Pear
- Brigitte Dress - das Tunika-Kleid - Nähtalente
Comments are closed.
Thread Carefully 
Oooh I look forward to your sewalong! I have a bazillion things in my queue so I’ll live vicariously through your sewing 🙂
Excellent!
Super cute dress – I added your sew along here too 🙂 http://swoodsonsays.com/sew-a-long-calendar/
What a great idea! Thank you Stephanie.
Cool. I downloaded mine the other day. Sewing queue permitting, I’ll get involved
That would be ace!
Ooh that looks fab! Is great timing giving that Me Made May is running then too! ps love the blog – just found you!
http://www.mancunianvintage.com
Great. Yes, if you’re taking part in MMM then you should have a new dress to wear by the end of the month! 😀
Eek!
Hi! I’ve seen your link at FB. Hungary is with you, also. 🙂 I will write the post about this project in my blog today, a bit later. It’s a 2 langyage blog (English included). Thank you! I’m sure we’ll all have the best ever dresses 🙂
Here’s a link: http://smilylana.blogspot.hu/2014/05/simple-sew-brigitte-dress-sewalong.html
Hi. I’m really liking your blog and I’m gutted to have missed this sewalong! But my friend and I are thinking of doing it now, following your tutorials 🙂 We’re quite new to sewing though, and wondered whether we could ask your advice on something before we start. With winter swiftly approaching, we were hoping to make this out of some snuggly interlock fabric, which would have a certain amount of stretch to it. Do you happen to know whether we’d need to cut the fabric a specific way, or would we be okay to go ahead and fold selvedge to selvedge and follow your instructions? Also, do you think we’d still need to insert a zip? Thanks 🙂
Hi there, so sorry for the late reply, I must have missed this! It would be great made out of interlock. You could cut the back on the fold instead of having a centre back seam – you wouldn’t need to have a zipper because the stretch of the fabric would be enough.
No worries – thank you for the advice, it’s really helpful! I would never have thought of cutting the back on the fold, being a newbie. I’m very nearly finished my current project, so I might move onto this next. How exciting! 😀
Excellent, hope it goes well!
Anyone have suggestions on the type of fabric to use for this dress?
Thanks for your excellent blog – only just got round to making this and it helped this novice sewer no end!