First 100% Linen Dress Ever

 I have used linen blends before, but now I want the real thing. So I placed an order with Club Tissus, a Canadian fabric store that carries a good assortment of linen types and weights, and another with fabrics-store.com, a firm that specialises in linen fabrics.

The fabric for this dress is a black and white Chambray from Club Tissus. It's a medium weight, completely opaque, and it feels rather heavy because the skirt uses a lot of fabric, and the giant pockets are double.

The pattern is Cora - Half Sleeve Linen Dress from fabrics-store.com and it was free.

 This was a PDF pattern and the download went very smoothly. I happen to find assembling patterns very relaxing! I'm retired so I don't care how long it takes.

I traced the 16/18 size but I ended up making several adjustments:

1. Created neck facings instead of finishing the neck with bias tape

2. Added the pockets

3. Reduced the shoulder width

4. Shortened the bust darts by a couple of inches.

5. Took the sleeves and the sides in by one inch. 

The latter three adjustments probably could have been taken care of by selecting the next size down, but I felt that was too small as the bust measurement on their finished size did not seem to allow for any ease in the bust. I will be more careful next time!

The shoulder and bust darts problems had shown up at the muslin stage, but the sleeve/sides didn't. Luckily, I had assembled the sleeves without assembling them or the bodice sides, so it was just a matter of sewing another seam inside the official one.

I also adjusted the width of the skirt by the same amount.

For the facings, I found all sorts of tutorials about that, but all I had to do was examine another dress to figure out how to make them.

The PDF patterns from fabrics-store.com come with a link to a well-illustrated tutorial, but there are details missing that can only be filled in by your own experience; for instance, no suggestions about finishing the seams, no mention of the width of the bias tape. I didn't use the tape, but for finishing the seams I used my own judgment, and zigzagged them all. Linen is a very expensive fabric (a dress like this costs almost $100 to make!) and you don't want to take a chance on its unravelling in the wash.

I posted this photo to a Facebook sewing group, and in one day I got over 1,500 likes, and so many nice compliments about how it looks on me that I almost blushed!

I hope you like it and that it may inspire you to make a dress, or to try linen, or both!