Who’s in the mood for a pretty dress?

Today, I’m sharing my version of the Elodie dress from issue 12 of Fibre Mood magazine, which will launch the same day this blog post goes up.

By way of full disclosure, I did receive this pattern free of charge from Fibre Mood, so that I could have the opportunity to sew it up and share in advance of the launch of issue 12. I would note, however, that I also have a Fibre Mood subscription paid out of my own pocket so I own it myself anyway! And, most importantly, I will never be anything but fully honest about my sewing experience, regardless of how I come to acquire a pattern.

My Fibre Mood Elodie dress is a size 46 (18 in the US-based sizing). This amazing print is viscose crepe from Blackbird Fabrics, but it was a little while ago that I purchased it and I can’t find it on their website anymore. Needless to say, I feel that it has met a perfect pattern match in this wintery prairie dress!

If I don’t say so myself!!

Before launching into things, just wanted to shout out to Fibre Mood who must have thought “nooooooooo!” to see the Elodie Wrap Dress from Closet Core Patterns launch pretty shortly before this issue of the magazine was ready! Indie designers should have some kind of secret register to make sure they don’t give their patterns the same name (remember Collete Penny and Sew Over It Penny!). And I’m guessing that there must be such a long lead-in time for product development and printing that you can’t just change the name if someone else suddenly uses it.

Oh well, now there are two lovely Elodie dresses out there for the sewing community to get excited about!

Sewing the Fibre Mood Elodie Dress

I really found the Fibre Mood Elodie to be a particularly enjoyable sewing experience. It is not complex at all, to the contrary its quite simple, but it has sufficient details that it felt like it was quite a substantial project anyway – in a good way!

From the roleau loops for the buttons on the sleeve cuff, to the use of both elastic and a self-fabric drawstring tie, it was always interesting to sew.

The only detail it is missing is POCKETS! I added side-seam pockets into mine. I know that lightweight pockets out of viscose aren’t the sturdiest, but I resolutely prefer even a crappy pocket to no pocket at all.

My Fibre Mood Elodie dress is sewn as drafted. My only tiny embellishment was placing two button at the cuff instead of one.

Only cuz I had actually found cute buttons and wanted to show them off!

And, speaking of sewing on buttons, I recently purchased some beeswax for the first time and ran my thread through it before sewing on the buttons. What a game changer! So smooth and tangle free – definitely took some frustration out of hand sewing.

Although it was later pointed out to me on instagram that you are also supposed to iron the waxed tread too. Even un-ironed it made hand sewing much easier, but I’ll try out the ironing too (if you promise it won’t make my iron a waxy mess!)

Do you beeswax before hand sewing?

Sewing tips

Sewing up the Fibre Mood Elodie dress was all straightforward.

The one little thing I forgot to do was use a lightweight interfacing where by back zip is installed. On such lightweight fabric, my zipper has caused a little waving, although the print makes it not too noticeable to the non-hyper-critical observer.

On my body I can actually just get this over my head without undoing the zip, so if it really bothers me, it’s actually still an option for me to remove the zip entirely.

My favourite features of the Fibre Mood Elodie Dress are the pretty blousing effect, the understated-but-still-distinct ruffle, the very simple neckline creating increased flexibility (the paper magazine features a model wearing a turtleneck underneath the dress which is great for the really wintery months) and THOSE CUFFS.

All the love for the look of these cuffs, aren’t they spectacular!!!!

Buuuuuut, I do have to say that, on my body the cuffs contribute to the one fault of this dress.

Which is that, ummmm, I can’t actually raise my arms.

The armscye is really quite low on this dress – which is probably the root cause of the mobility issue. This means that when I move around and raise my arms, the sleeve moves around and upward quite a lot.

When this is combined by the fact that the cuff is a little tight for me, when I raise my arms, the sleeve wants to move upwards but the tight cuff runs into resistance (otherwise known as my arm) which doesn’t let it go any further.

So, yeah, no raising my arm to speak in this Fibre Mood Elodie Dress.

The quick fix solution to this would be making my cuff a little wider so that it is big enough to travel a little further up my arm if I raise my hand. This would be a piece of cake to do and wouldn’t require changing the sleeve at all. There are so many gethers in this one that it would just be slightly less gathered. No big deal.

The proper solution to this problem would probably be raising the armscye for increased mobility.

But since armscyes and sleeve caps constitute the most unfathomable part of any sewing pattern to me, it’s rather unlikely that I would actually doing this.

But, on this one, I’m gonna say that the sleeve is so darn pretty that I’m going to forgive it its trespasses.

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I mean, really, who could stay mad at a dress this pretty for long?????

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.