This IS My Dress

 Apparently I'm just a Style Arc Fangirl now.  I love my hope dresses, but even more than Hope - I love the Nova Midi Dress.  

It was love at first sight with my very first version, with the only changes to lower the neckline a bit more and add pockets. I wear both version of this dress weekly in the summer and I wear them with sweaters, tights and boots in the winter. 

JB and I try to take a nice vacation yearly. Since I'm not knitting as much as I once was, I try to bring a piece of fabric home from vacation. 

This past January we went to Cancun and while we had an incredibly relaxing time, I'm not in a big hurry to go back. The main reason why - it's just too far from everything. You really have to do all inclusive because there's no place to eat, except at the resort.

Anyway - I bought back this beautiful 3 meter piece of challis that was roughly $4 a meter.

There's not much to say about this dress. I mostly followed the pattern. I did lower the neckline, by 1.5" overall.

(geeze, we really need to pain that light post)

I also added pockets, I used lining fabric for the first pocket piece sewed onto the front, then same fabric for the pocket back. Due to the gathers, I did not stitch the pockets to the front skirt pieces, but I did stitch them to the waist seam.

For this dress, once I had attached each gather, I then serged the seam, pressed it up and then topstitched it. 

While I still don't like how I look in photos - please don't come at me. The menopausal weight is just weighing heavy on me currently. Do yourself a favor and find a friend who makes you feel beautiful when they take your photo.  All photos in this post were taken by Carolyn.

I am currently evaluating all of the challis in my fabric closet for more Novas. And I really, really want to make one in graduating sizes of gingham.  

Nova Midi - or the dress without any gingham

I have long had a love/hate relationship with rayon challis.  I mean, I love it because it's cool and comfortable to wear; and the colors are bright and vibrant.

And I hate it because it's slippery as all get out!  I think my love affair with rayon challis really started with my first southport, and I've never looked back.  It really is the perfect fabric for a cool summer dress.

I would like to say that this pattern was on my radar long before my BFF Carolyn made it, but since she carted it to sew camp, and her blog post went live and I purchased it the next day, well . . . 

I made this dress from 4 yards of challis fabric that I bought at Goods Store in East Earl on June 15, 2022.  Goods mostly has quilting cottons and some poly dress fabric that the Amish & Mennonites use for their dresses.  But when evening when I was killing some time, I wandered through the fabric and spotted this challis. When I got home, I saw I had bought the pink colorway of the exact same fabric from FabricMart earlier that year. 

I have 2 regrets about this dress - or maybe 3.

1. I didn't lower the neckline. I find StyleArc's necklines high for my personal taste and I didn't lower this one.  I definitely will next time.
2. I didn't add pockets.  This failure to add pockets in a first make is recurring theme of mine.  Because I'm home a lot of the time and running through this huge house I need to keep my phone with me and pockets are the easiest way. 
3. I didn't finish the seams. I know!  What was I thinking?  It's now been washed a few times and honestly, I'm not sure how much longer it will last.  I think I'll go back in and topstitch the tiers.  Which will add just a bit of finishing and hopefully stop the seam allowances from shredding to bits.

What I did do, I added 1/2" to the top and bottom tiers and an inch to the middle tier.  Why?  Not sure.  Being tall, midi lengths always bother me.  They always feel like something just wasn't quite long enough.  But I didn't add enough to make it a full maxi.

I will say, that it's still long enough I need to grab the skirt to walk upstairs so I don't trip on it.

The twirl factor of this dress is amazing!  And by using challis, while the skirt is really full, it hangs close to my body!  

As Carolyn said in her post, if you don't like gathering, don't make this dress!  There is a LOT of gathering to be done.  I sewed 2 rows of gathering stitches all the way around and gathered toward the center.

If I could get a more consistent gather with either my gathering foot or ruffler, I would have used one of those. 

This was a quick, easy dress to sew and I'm sad I waited almost a year from cutting it out to sewing it up.