This Fiona Sun Dress by Closet Case Patterns may just be my favourite wearable muslin ever. This version is the bodice of view A, mashed with the shorter skirt of view B.

But, with an extra special twist!

And, ummm, it kind of makes me feel like a pin up bombshell!

Haha!!

Yeah, I gotta encourage the hubby to be patient enough to take my blog photos somehow…

The fabric here is a totally luscious brushed cotton twill from Meter Meter, however, I purchased it almost a year ago and I don’t think it’s in stock anymore. It was something of a revelation to me making a very form fitting dress in a rather heavy fabric and the way that it skims over all manner of bumps and lumps was rather refreshing indeed.

All the jeans buttons on this one, came from Blackbird Fabrics.

And, guess what?

My version of the Fiona Sun Dress has a deep dark hidden secret. (That you’ve probably managed to figure out already…)

It’s not actually a dress at all!

I decided to make up the Fiona Sun Dress as spearates for added versality. I especially wanted to also have the skirt as a stand-alone garment.

Pretty much because I just wanted to have this look in my wardrobe:

Sewing the Fiona Sun Dress as separates

I didn’t really have to do very much at all to turn the Fiona Sun Dress into separates.

The Faux Fiona Sun Dress, if you will.

I added a plain rectangular waistband – consisting of an interfaced waistband and a waistband facing, to the skirt, of 3cm wide, plus seam allowances.

And, in all honesty, that’s pretty much all that I did.

Being aware that the skirt as a separate was not going to sit on the same place on my body as if it was actually sewn to the bodice, I realised I would also need to lengthen the bodice piece to ensure that it would remain ‘tucked inside’ the skirt and looking like, well, a dress.

To do so, I randomly decided to add 2 inches to the length of my bodice.

Hear ye, hear ye, this was NOT enough.

The bodice totally slips out of the skirt all the time. If I did it again, I would ensure that I extend the length of the bodice by at least 4 inches to make sure that it really remains securely inside the skirt when worn.

My Fiona Sun Dress

My Fiona Sun Dress is sewn as a straight size 14.

I found the fit out of the envelope to be pretty damn good. Of course, Closet Case have a really useful blog post and e-book about fitting the Fiona Sun Dress, so there are definitely sufficient resources out there to help you resolve any manner of problem.

The only change I needed to make to the bodice was to take a bit of room out of the top couple of inches of the side seam.

The only difficult area I had when fitting was around the thighs. There is very little ease in the view B skirt, so if, like me, the widest point on your body is not actually your hips but around your thighs, take this into account when choosing your size. The skirt was initially way too tight at the widest point of my thighs. Somehow, by using every last available mm of the seam allowance, I was able to arrive at something that fits, but I really, ideally, would need an extra inch or so at the widest point of my thighs.

The very close fit means that I have zero chance of being able to wear this skirt on a bicycle, which will limit its practical wearability on a day to day basis for me.

Fiona Sun Dress: The Process

I found sewing the Fiona Sun Dress to be a mostly straightforward process.

I was a tad confused by the instructions for attaching the straps to the band at the top of the dress and kind of ended up doing my own thing here, but that was likely me just having a bit of a ‘does not compute’ moment in my own mind.

The other moment in the sewing process where I really laughed at myself was because I really couldn’t be bothered changing the colour of my overlocker thread to matching navy, so instead I went through my scrap bin and found some cute leftovers and was about to start making bias binding instead before I totally checked myself.

You nutbag!

Making bias binding and binding every seam is going to take a million times longer than simply changing the thread!!!

Repeat after me: overlocker thread is not your enemy…

So yeah, I changed those cones over and off this Fiona Sun Dress went!

My favourite part of sewing the Fiona Sun Dress was all this luscious top stitching. I topstitched with my usual technique of using regular thread but using the triple stitch on my machine to really make it pop.

BTW, in some photos the lines on my skirt and bodice don’t line up. This is totally because of the modifications I’ve done to make it separates and the fact that the skirt is sitting lower on my body than it would if attached. When the skirt is held up to the part where it would have been attached if it was an actual Fiona Sun Dress, they line up perfectly.

Muslin for what?

Now, you may recall at the beginner that I said this make was a wearable muslin. And, it is! I had a fabric I’d been hording that I really love and had spent the last year rotating through at least 5 ideas of what to do with it. When I finally decided on a Fiona Sun Dress, I thought it best to properly test out the bodice fit on a less precious fabric first.

So that’s the origin story of this current Faux Fiona Sun Dress as separates and I couldn’t be happier. I feel that it’s a real winner of a ‘bonus’ project!

And just look at the darn versatility:

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Further, while I haven’t photgraphed it this way, it also works with a turtleneck underneath, meaning that you don’t necessarily need access to sun to wear the Fiona Sun Dress!

And stay tunes for some more Fiona Sun Dress hacky magic from the real fabric in the future!!

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.