Today I’m sharing the Fibre Mood Lexi from issue 11 of Fibre Mood magazine.

I have gone a little bit hack-happy on it, though!

This main fabric here is French terry from Blackbird Fabrics – I bought it last winter, so I can’t remember all of its details. The pink and white trims are interlock from Meter Meter.

My version of the Fibre Mood Lexi is a size “Large”.

I was going for the vibe of a true “sweater dress” in the sense that I wanted it to look just like a massive sweater which goes all the way to the knees.

(As an aside, does anyone else find the word sweater annoying? Is it called that because we sweat while wearing it in sporting and active scenarios? Because it is supposed to keep us warm and therefore, sweaty? I don’t know. I do know, however, that, for me, sweat just doesn’t seem to me to be the most appealing aspect to emphasise! The Australian in me wants to call this a “jumper” but I wasn’t sure if I would be widely understood!! Plus, I’m fully prepared to admit that in the game of who-speaks-English-best the word “jumper” likely makes even less sense than “sweater”.

Perhaps I’ll just think of this as a “sporting style dress”.)

Now, I have gone a bit hack-happy on my version of the Fibre Mood Lexi.

In fact, I think the sewing goddesses are kind of laughing at me with this one. Because, I’m always the first to complain about how I hate patterns without seam allowances included – like the patterns in pretty much all sewing magazines – Fibre Mood included (although if you buy them digitally, you can choose whether the seam allowances are included or not!). This time around, however, due to my desire to get hacky, I found it tremendously helpful to not have seam allowances included!

I could just imagine someone laughing at me “told you so, told you so, it’s better this way!!”.

Hacking the Fibre Mood Lexi

So, in no particular order, here are my hacks to the Fibre Mood Lexi.

Let’s start with the design lines. I loved the look of the lines across the front, but I felt that it definitely needed a nice little extra stripe. Because colour blocking is everything. My added white stripe is two centimetres wide, which I made space for by reducing each of the top and bottom front pieces by 1 centimetre each.

I wasn’t actually planning on mirroring the colour blocked look on the back – being content for a simple back. But then I discovered that I didn’t have quite enough navy fabric to cut the full length of the back piece. I was about 20 centimetres short in length. I had plenty of pink and white left over, however, and so that is how the hacked back came to be.

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

Now, the design lines extending around to the back also are actually one of my favourite features of this Fibre Mood Lexi!

Sticking to the neck/yoke area, I also made a couple of other modifications here. I thought from the sample photos that the neckline seemed very high and it seemed to have an unusual cut which was very narrow at the shoulder. I slightly scooped the front neck line down, slightly widened the neckband piece and lengthened the neckband to make up for the fact that my interlock fabric was not super-stretchy.

I also made the shoulder seam 1 centimetre longer, so that the shoulder doesn’t look quite as narrow as in the original design.

The other area where I’ve gone big, in terms of hacks, is the sleeve. On sleeves, I do have to say that I think 3/4 or 7/8 sleeves are, in general, just a bit silly. For me, you either need a full-length sleeve or a short (somewhere above elbow depending on overall shape and design) sleeve is fine. And on a sweater dress for winter – of course I need full length sleeves!

I had been planning on lengthening the sleeves that come with the Fibre Mood Lexi but, as I flipping through the magazine, I saw a RTW sweater with fantastic sleeves that I fell a little bit in love with. Well, you know, except for the silly length!!!!

So that RTW sweater became the starting point for what turned out to be a bigger sleeve hack than originally planned. My fabric is not quite hefty enough to hold the shape as well as the RTW inspiration, but I’m mostly happy with it (well, except for the moments when I wonder if it looks a little too much like a Courtroom or choir robe…)

In order to make this vastly expanded sleeve, I legthened it and then slashed the sleeve at several points, adding a total of about 20 centimetres of additional width into the sleeve, evenly dispersed throughout. I then used gathers at both the sleeve head and cuff to get the crazy puffy sleeve spectacular!

I’ve also obviously, added those wrist cuffs and band at the bottom, in accordance with my desired giant-frickin-sweater vibe!

Sewing the Fibre Mood Lexi

Upon from sharing this litany of hacks, I don’t have much else to say about the Fibre Mood Lexi.

It is definitely a bit on the roomy size, in terms of sizing. My body measurements had me a little border line between the L and XL and I’m really glad I went with the smaller option.

Also, the pattern comes with pockets, but I found that they really impacted on the look of the dress, pulling it down awkwardly at the side seams. I had been loving the work-in-progress until I added in the pockets and it suddenly looked totally bizarre!

And that’s with nothing in them!!

So I removed them – which I do have to confess is a bit annoying for my ultimate loungewear outfit.

I might have to think about adding a patch pocket at some point. I would suggest to anyone using the pockets that come with Fibre Mood Lexi, to think about sewing them in a lighter jersey, rather than the heavier sweatshirting or french terry that’s likely to be your main fabric.

So, all in all, there’s a good chance I’ll be wearing this dress every weekend over winter. Cursing the lack of pockets each time, most likely, whilst being simultaneously grateful for the joy of a big warm fabric cuddle all around me!

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.