A simple pink linen dress has been on my Summer “To Do” for a while now.

And the lovely seam lines of the Tea House Dress from Sew House Seven sucked me in. This is view C, the longest length with the wider ties.

Does anyone else find the name of this dress difficult to remember? I always want to call it the “Afternoon Tea Dress” for some weird reason! I generally really like the way that the naming practice of indie patterns makes it easy for them to stick in my mind. Does anyone else take a garment out of their wardrobe and think “hello Kalle” or similar?

So it bugs me that the name of this pattern just steadfastly refuses to remain in my mind.

Anyway, the fabric for my Tea House Dress came from Ray Stitch, it’s a lightweight Japanese linen. I find that pink is a tricky colour as you need to find just the right tone to complement your skin tone. I have more than one pink-toned fabric sitting in my stash because I bought it online and when I held it up against me upon arrival, the tone was just “meh!”. So I seized the opportunity to buy this lovely pink linen while I was shopping in person.

My Tea House Dress

My afternoon tea dress is a size 12. I’m happy with the size as it is but it’s a little on the roomy size. If I went down a size, I think it would still be fine. But the joy of ties is that there is some flexibility built in!

At the outset, I had thought about doing something a little more creative with this one. I got out my scrap bin and was playing around with a touch of color blocking.

I was planning on doing the yoke, cuff and ties in a contrasting colour but when it cut it out, the width of the yoke and the combination with the ties made it all look a little, well, ecclesiastical.

Which was not what I was going for!

So I went back to the plain pink.

After all, pretty seamlines and lovely pink linen don’t really need much adornment, right? Although I did engage in a tiny bit of adornment, by adding some additional top stitching to emphasise these pretty ol’ seamlines.

This was the first time I’ve sewn a Sew House Seven pattern. Everything went pretty smoothly and this all came together surprisingly quickly and easy. After cutting out all the pieces, it seemed as though this would be a rather involved project, but the lack of any closures actual makes it a very straightforward and simple sew.

It’s always a good feeling when a project comes together faster than you imagined!

I thought there were a couple of places where the instructions went a bit back and forward. From the back piece to the front piece then back to the back piece then the front piece in the very next steps. There just seemed to be a few places where the instructions could have been better thought through to be more streamlined.

But this is a pretty minor bug-bear!

The only “don’t do as I did” advice was that I was on automatic pilot and I added interfacing where required right as I cut out the pieces. The Tea House Dress uses a technique I’ve never seen below of using stay stitching to ever so minimally “gather” the edge and slightly reduce is length before you add the interfacing. I wasn’t able to do this as I interface automatically to get it over and done with and it didn’t really cross my mind to read the instructions first!

Tea House Dress: The Verdict

The Tea House Dress achieves the elusive goal of looking very visually interesting from all angles – front, back and side! When I finish a project, there is almost always at least one angle that I like less than others. But that’s not the case here!!

On that note, I think this dress is also a good example of why it’s always worth taking photos of your makes – even if it’s just for yourself. You see, when I first finished this dress, I didn’t really love it. I wsan’t sure if the length and the A-line skirt shape were quite right for me. Who know – probably just a bad day when I tried it on and finished! So, I’d actually kind of put it in the figurative “problem-to-figure-out-later” bin. But then I decided to take a few photos and, looking at it with fresh eyes, and from all angles, I frickin’ love it!

So take photos, keep an open mind and don’t try your final product on when you’re in a cranky mood!!

Ok, I’m out! I reckon that’s enough wisdom for one blog post!

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