When I first saw the Page Dress by Elbe Textiles, it was love at first sight. All those tucks were just utterly irresistable.

In fact, I actually somehow missed the release of this pattern and I first saw the Page dress on The Fabric Store’s blog.

And you may notice that I’ve totally copied the version they sewed up because I loved it so much.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all.

The Page Dress totally jumped my sewing queue. It’s even being one of the only non-loungewear items that I’ve had sufficient motivation to sew in the last month. I’ve made mine out of Fabric Store linen in acorn. I also bought the matching pre-made linen bias binding to go with it, just to keep things simple. I also used extra of the bias binding as my internal drawstring.

After all, if I’m committing to 64 pin tucks, no way am I going to have to energy to make my own bias binding! Plus the pre-made perfectly matched bias binding means that I can even make a feature out of it by leaving it visible, rather than tucking it all away inside.

The Page Dress, for me, at least, was definitely not a project for the faint hearted.

But, I got there in the end.

And I now have a pretty new dress for, you know, whenever it is that I can go outside again.

At which point, I’m fairly certain it will start to rain uncontrollably.

Pin tucks forever

I have a confession to make which is going to make me appear ridiculously stupid.

Oh sew dumb!

But I will confess anyway.

Because the main reason I maintain this blog is to try to provide some form of assistance to other sewists out there and some of you may find it helpful to have a good laugh at my expense!

You see, when I purchased the Page Dress pattern, I was kind of expecting it to have a weirdly shaped super wide bodice, to account for the fact that you have to put in the pin tucks.

But, umm, the way it actually works is that you sew the pin tucks into a rectangular piece of fabric and then you cut out the pattern pieces from the pleated rectangles you have created.

So the Page Dress pattern pieces, of course, are entirely normal shaped.

Duh, pin tucks in the fabric before cutting anything out.

Makes perfect frickin’ sense!

At first I was giddy with excitement at this revelation. My brain was going, “so I can use this method to add pin tucks to anything!”.

Now, having actually sewn the pin tucks, I’m a little more circumspect. I could add pin tucks to anything. I may just need a bit of distance from this project, however, before I ever contemplate actually do so.

Pin tucks are exhausting, guys!

So let’s talk about those pin tucks! My Page Dress is a size E, which necessitates that it has 64 pin tucks – 16 on each front piece and 32 on the back!

It definitely took me a while to get the hang of the pin tucks. In fact, I even started doing them completely wrong before realising part way through that it didn’t seem right.

Cue unpicking time.

(Luckily, I’d only done 4 or so when I realised it wasn’t working, so it definitely could have been worse!)

Then I discovered that there is a tutorial on the Elbe Textile website about how to sew these tucks, which I found clearer than the instructions. It is a very useful step-by-step tutorial which totally cleared up all of my confusion.

So if you are sewing the pin tuck version of this pattern, do go to the effort of checking out the tutorial before you start. There’s a good chance it’ll save you time – if you’re anything like me that is!

And, even better, the actual method for doing the tucks was much simpler than the convoluted method I’d made up!

And I know I am complaining about these tucks, but I do want to be clear that they are not actually difficult to do. It’s just really repetitive.

All-in-all, they took me around 2.5-3 hours to do. I do strongly recommend breaking up the tuck sewing sessions if you can, just for sanity-saving reasons!

Page Dress Pickles

The tucks weren’t the only time I found myself in a bit of a pickle with sewing the Page Dress.

Once you have painstakingly sewed the tucks into your loooong rectangles of fabric (the back and front of the dress are each a single pattern piece, there is no separate bodice and skirt), you are ready to actually cut out your dress.

However, I actually found it tricky to do so.

Yeah, I wasn’t really sure how to cut.

Cue some more sew dumb action!

You see, at this point, your fabric is no longer flat. Those tucks means that you have oodles of volume and movement in the ‘skirt’ part of the fabric and I actually found it really difficult to cut even the really simple pattern piece when my fabric wasn’t totally flat.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I messed it up and cut it off grain in parts, as a result of which the fabric is hanging strangely around my hips and pockets in a way that kind of bothers me in the finished Page Dress.

Although, here is a shot of me trying to disguise that by putting my hands in my pockets…

Rather strangely I also find that the pockets are a tad too low for me.

That’s a new one!

Where to waist?

The other issue I had in cutting out a pattern piece from a piece of fabric in which the tucks were already sewn as that I didn’t understand that it might be better to place the pattern pieces so that the tucks finish just below my waist. Rather, I aligned the top of my pattern piece with the top of my fabric, which resulted in my tucks extending 4 inches below my waistline in the final dress.

This ended up creating a really unflattering look at the front because the dress was cinched in at the waist but then, 4 inches lower, there was a sudden puff of volume at the end of the tucks.

And so I began the painstaking task of unpicking the bottom 4 inches of my pin tucks.

It took me almost double the time to unpick that bottom 4 inches of each tuck then it did to actually sew each one. So about 2 hours and 22 minutes to unpick the front alone.

Not that I was so irritated that I actually counted or anything!

The thing is, I didn’t want to just rip the stitiches out. I couldn’t just go all Daenerys on them. I needed to do it carefully enough that the thread remained in tact so that I could use that thread to safely secure the edge so my tucks don’t unravel over time.

I did this along the front and I think it vastly improved the look of the Page Dress.

But I was too exhausted to undo the bottom of my tucks at at the back, so along the back piece, the tucks still extend to their original length. I don’t think the pleats extending below the waist line looks as strange at the back though.

Or perhaps that’s just what I’ve convinced myself because I don’t really see it! Anyway, it is what it is, I ain’t unpicking those tucks!

So, my main tip for anyone sewing the Page Dress is that if you want the volume of the end of the tucks to hit at your waist, make sure you line your pattern pieces up accordingly when you are cutting them out and have the end of the pleats reaching to no more than an inch below where your drawstring will be.

On my body, my actual natural waist was also quite a distance from the suggested line for the drawstring. I also find that the Page Dress size E is also a tad loose around the underarm.

All in all, I have to say that I do actually wish I had made the effort to do a muslin of the Page Dress (without the tucks, obviously!). This would have let me fix the room under the arms and, most importantly, to identify precisely where the waist would be sitting. And I could definitely have finished sewing a muslin in the time it took me to unpick the mistakes I made by not having one.

So, yeah, lesson learned on this one!

When engaging in a time consuming highly detailed project, it’s worth muslin-ing.

Again, sew dumb is obviously my theme for the day!

And finally, one thing that I am currently in short supply of in isolation are buttons! So I got creative on this one and mixed all of my assorted leftover Arrow Mountain bamboo buttons into one garment. After all, who says buttons have to be identical?

So I think that’s all I got – these tucks took it out of me guys!

When I look at these photos, I actually like the finished product and it feels wonderful to wear. So don’t let my new found pin tuck hatred put you off.

Just, you know, be aware of what you’re getting into and make sure you’re stocked up on chocolate, wine and podcasts when you attempt this one!

Cuz drinking and sewing straight lines – what could possibly go wrong with that?

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.