A cute autumn dress (Scroop miramar)

 This year I haven't sewn as much regular clothes as I did last year. One reason is that I haven't felt that I have needed so much new clothes, another has actually been that I feel that as much as I love the N'gaio blouse pattern, I got a bit bored with it. I needed something more to be a base pattern for small everyday projects. Once again I turned to Scroop patterns. I like them a lot, as is probably obvious from my other posts, but I am also now quite used to sewing them so I know that they work, I know my size and I know that I will understand the instructions without having to think too much about how it should go together. 

Earlier this year I bought the Miramar pattern. I liked that it was versatile, being able to be used both as a dress and top, I'm personally not a tunic fan, with two sleeve lengths and that it had an interesting neckline. When I make my own clothes I want them to have something that makes them different from something I can buy in a store, some kind of detail and this was the neck. It is also made for knits, and have instructions for how to sew in knits with a regular machine. I mostly wear soft and knitted clothes, so having a base pattern that is made for knitted fabric is really good.

In the summer I for once happend to pass a physical fabric store so I picked up this fabric. At first my plan was to make a top, but I realised that I really wanted it as a dress so changed my mind. The Miramar pattern is not the most conservative when it comes to fabric needed. Part of its simplicity is that there are only three pieces, two fronts and one back, but with the sleeves cut in one with pieces a long sleeved dress takes in my size takes almost 2 m in my size. It is also a pattern that is not suited for obvious ups and downs with the suggested cutting layout. This fabric had the cute cherries and on the front they are hanging down, but on the back they are facing upwards instead. 

The boring part with sewing, if you ask me at least, is cutting out the fabric. But that is why I love our cosplay group meetings every week, nowadays we are in a school crafting area with full access on the sewing side to sewing machines and a good cutting table. So when I don't have obvious projects that I work on I have started to bring fabric there, and I can cut them out and take the cut out pieces home, so when I feel like sewing I can just bring them out and start with the fun part - the sewing.

I cut the pieces out some week ago and this weekend I could sew them together. The pattern is really simple, the only fiddly bit was to figure out how the facing should be attached, but when I just followed the images it worked out fine. When attaching the facing it is a good thing to pin it in place before sewing. I had to make that seam smaller than suggested, and it would not have been fun to unpick the stretch seam.

As usual from Scroop pattern I enjoyed sewing it and it went together like a charm. One mistake that I did was that I wasn't attentive and missed that when I used a knit stitch on my machine it shifted the needle position, so the back neck seam got a wider seam allowance before I realised it. That's probably why I had to fiddle a bit with the neck facing as well, but it didn't change the size too much. The only modification I did was to lengthen the sleeves as much as possible, by simply drawing straight lines from where the pattern ended to the edge of the fabric. I am not a fan of 3/4 sleeves and this way I could get them a bit longer at least.