The Jessica Dress is a FREE pattern that you receive when you sign up to the Mimi G newsletter mailing list.

For a free pattern, I think it’s pretty impressive, and bang on trend.

But, as you can probably tell from the title, I kind of hate my Jessica dress!

But I do want to be very clear at the outset that it’s not because there is anything wrong with the Jessica pattern! The pattern is pretty awesome. In my opinion, it’s definitely a cut above the type of pattern you will often find as a free offering. It’s not a free t-shirt or collar or sleeve. It’s an entire dress!

However, this was just one of those projects where everything seemed to go wrong and I was not in the right sewing frame of mind. But I forged ahead anyway. Cuz it really does take a lot to make me step away from my sewing machine.

So with the disclaimer that the Jessica Sun Dress is a great free pattern that is definitely worth a try, here is my rant about what happens when the sewjo just don’t want to flow!!

Pattern and instructions

I’m not really going to comment much on the Jessica Dress instructions, as I didn’t really follow them. I saw right away that the instructions started with the skirt, including hemming it, which I found odd, since you may not know what length ends up looking good on you. So I kind of gave the instructions a miss from that point.

A  word of warning that the instructions seemed a little less hand-holding than some  indie patterns, so maybe it’s not the best dress for your first ever dress. But there was still enough information for even beginner sewists to sew this.

The other thing that slightly irritated me about the Jessica Dress pattern was the layout in A0 format. Since I have found a place where I can have my patterns affordably printed and sent to me in the mail, I disavow any cutting and sticking! The Jessica Sun dress is set out over 2 A0 sheets, but it is split so that the skirt pieces each fall on a single A0 piece but the various bodice pieces are split between the two, so there still ended up being several small fiddly pieces that had to be stuck together. Surely, if it’s necessary to split pattern pieces in half, it would be better to split a nice big skirt piece which is then just one easy straight line to stick together.

But, petty grievances, these are…

My take on the Jessica Dress

For my Jessica Dress, I  made a few modifications from the original pattern.

I replaced the spaghetti straps with wider straps. Not only do both the Fiona Sun Dress by Closet Case Patterns and the Seren Dress by Tilly and the Buttons tell me that this is bang-on-trend at the moment, it also puts me in TEAM BRA STRAP COVERAGE all the way.

I also didn’t want the gathered skirt so I altered the skirt pieces to be the same size as my waist.

I also added in piping along the bodice and the waist.

Cuz I love the look of piping. But damn did I not enjoy installing it …

My Jessica dress is a size Small, graded to medium at the waist. This was squarely what the size chart put me in. Warning, there is really not much ease and I was kind of convinced the whole way through that it was going to be too small.

So I sewed tiny seam allowances throughout the bodice for safety. Which kind of got me into trouble…

Jessica woes

This Jessica dress is a blatant, albeit inadequate, copy of this amazing version made by @rcoselmo.sews! All the love for that dress.

As soon as I saw her dress, I knew I needed oversized check to make this happen!

But after searching, I couldn’t find anything that looked like this check in cotton or linen available in Europe (although if you’re lucky enough to be in the US, it was available at Imagine Gnats, not sure if all colours still available…).

So I moved on…

But then, in a chance stop for thread at my local store, I saw this cotton/poly blend. It’s not the same gloriously oversized motif, but it’s pretty close. And it was cheap!!

It’s been ages since I’ve worn anything with polyester, but that dress had still been interrupting my dreams. So the cotton poly blend plaid came home with me.

In the end, I feel like the fabric is just a little too heavy for the Jessica dress. It looks a tad stiff at the ends of the skirt. Thank goodness, I didn’t attempt the gathered skirt!

The other thing is that since this fabric was much cheaper than the fabrics I usually work with, I maybe didn’t treat it with the respect it deserved. Instead of  painstakingly figuring out how to pattern match, I was more like “ummm, this should be ok and if it doesn’t work, I can just cut a new one”. But, of course, I’m too lazy to ever actually cut a new one. So in the end, I feel like I didn’t do this dress the justice it deserved in terms of pattern matching and it bugs me!

So I promise never to be a fabric snob again. I will treat all fabric with respect. If it is worth sewing with, it deserves to be treated right!!

So what’s wrong with it?

In all honesty, the main thing that’s wrong with this Jessica dress, is probably just my head space while sewing it.

I had the idea that I would make it. The fabric landed in my lap. It was going to be 30 degrees on Sunday (that kind of heat is pretty unheard of here, well usually…) and we had a big outdoor party to go to. So Friday night I decided, I need this Jessica dress to wear by Sunday.

That’s never a good start, right?

And then even though it’s a simple dress, things started to go wrong. And then I started grumbling to myself saying, “you know I really would prefer to be spending this time sewing project X, which is next in the cue”.

And when that sewing excitement wears off way to prematurely, it can just become a slog.

Such slog is, of course, exacerbated when things just kept going wrong!

First, since I was worried I had cut the bodice out too small, I tried to sew the bodice together with a mini-micro seam allowance. This was kind of OK, until I went to try to finish my seams. The combination of the small seam allowance with the bulk of the piping, meant I couldn’t get it through my serger.  There also wasn’t enough seam left to zig zag. So I had to use pinking shears. But this fabric frays like crazy and I am doubtful that this shoddy finishing is going to withstand more than couple of washes.

Indeed, it didn’t even withstand the first time I wore this Jessica dress. Since one of the princess seams actually split open while I was wearing it. Classy!  That particular seam had just been sewn so micro that it was barely even a seam.Luckily everyone I was with while I was wearing it that day was too busy celebrating France’s  world cup victory to notice anything like a split open bust seam! On est, on est, on est les champions!

Hmmm, so what else went wrong? I sewed my straps on the wrong side of the piping, so that they covered the piping at the strap, instead of being behind it. I then unpicked to re-do this at the front of the strap (couldn’t be bothered re-doing at the back, I don’t see it so it won’t bother me). Then, after re-doing the straps, I realised I’d still left one of them too long!

My skirt alterations didn’t go so well at first, either. The skirt sat very strangely at the back, bunching up on top of my butt. So I had to unpick and insert some darts. Which, if I’d been thinking straight in the first place, I should have anticipated from the outset.

The enormous pockets the Jessica Dress is designed with just looked weird on me. Once I realised this, since a woman needs pockets, I then had to unpick the side seams to add inseam ones. Which, of course, I made too small.

Finally, since I really didn’t want to sew all those button holes, I was determined to put in studs. I had a pack of 10 lovely pyrm anorak studs. I went to install them. I had ruined three, at which point it was pointless continuing since 7 wasn’t going to be enough to get the dress closed. I just can’t hammer straight to save myself! I kept accidentally pounding them in at an angle and they wouldn’t install – I really just need to buy a set of pliers cuz this happens every time I want to ‘save time’ with snaps! So then I had to go find some buttons after all. And my local store kept having perfect buttons that were just what I wanted – but with only one left in the tube!!!

There’s kind of a theme here, right? When your heart and mind just aren’t into a project, these little things just seem to accumulate and leave you tearing out your hair (and leaving your loved ones tip toeing quietly around the room, hoping you don’t notice their presence and roar like a dragon – or is that just me???)

To pipe…

And I also realised that I am desperately in need of some piping advice. I realised that I have no idea what you are supposed to do when you need to finish the edge of a piece of piping.

Do you know what I mean?

In the waist seam here, the piping was the last thing I installed. But then the excess piping was just kind of hanging off the edge and I didn’t know how to make it all neat and tidy.

I realise now, that I probably should have redrafted the bodice facing and skirt facing pieces to be an all-in-one facing. Then I could have attached that at the end and tucked the ending of the piping into the seam.

But I didn’t think of that. So I had exposed piping at the centre of my button-front. I had a few centimetres of excess piping on either side, so I just kind of folded it around and hand stitched it on the inside.

It looks ok from the outside. But there was still some odd pulling that made it necessary that I place two buttons really close to either side of the waist seam to hold it all together in the right place.

Such sewing drama! But even if the outside gets a bare pass, this Jessica dress is a total dog’s breakfast inside. Honestly the ugliest insides I have ever sewn!

So any other ideas as to what you can do to make the end of a piece of piping look neat and tiddly if you can’t somehow encase it inside a seam?

At least it’s not a UFO…

One of the reasons that I always just “keep on trucking” through a sewing project is because I don’t believe in UFOs. It’s as though keeping unfinished objects would disrupt the sewing feng shui.

I consider myself to have only two options: chuck it (or re-use the fabric) or finish it. So when a project isn’t going well, I tend to power through and finish it badly…

Maybe I should reconsider this and there may be some value in putting things aside for a while…

But, for now, I have a Jessica sun dress. It is sort of holding itself together. And since we’re having the longest summer in the decade I’ve lived in Europe I will hang on to it for this season and give my shoulders some much needed vitamin D.

But, in all honesty, I’d be surpirsed if this one lasts much longer than the season.

Or the next wash…

Meh, whatever. You win some. You lose some.

Onward and upwards to the next sewing adventure!

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.