A new beach dress was in order, we went off on a beach holiday in July to escape the Melbourne winter but would you believe we had so much fun relaxing and playing I didn’t take any photos of this dress while we were away. So I’ve had to wait for the weather to warm up before I could take any photos here.
I had been wanting to make this dress for a while and a beach holiday was the perfect excuse!! I love the frilly sleeves on this dress. In fact I love them so much I decided to add a matching frill to the bottom of the dress too. I shortened the dress by 16cm before I added the frill.
This is a great pattern, only had one problem with it – the pleats. I just couldn’t get them to look right and I went back to the paper pattern piece and discovered why – the markings weren’t even, some of them were out by as much as 5mm, grrrr. What I should have done was trace a new pattern piece and carefully measure out some new pleat markings in but I had wasted enough time unpicking and re-sewing already so I just used my iron and judged it by eye. It worked out better but not quite perfect. I will use this pattern again cause its so cute, but I will make a new yoke pattern piece with the correct markings on.
The fit is fantastic, loose and flowy – perfect for an over the swimming costume dress. I used a really light cotton voile which is perfect for this purpose and it is so cool.
Apologies for the wet black bikini underneath but it is a beach dress after all!
Materials
Cotton voile from Rathdowne remnants, Tessuti Mia tunic pattern, buttons from Jimmy buttons in Fitzroy, cotton thread
elizathreads 
Thus is really sweet. Shame the tucks were so annoying but that’s hamdy to know!