Apparently I’m in summer dress mode! (Although, I think I feel a quilt coming on.) I’d been wanting to make the Esteem dress from Cali Faye for quite a while and only just found a fabric that I felt would suit it. Her sample is made from something with a bit of stretch so I wanted to try the same, but I find it so hard to find good prints/colours with a bit of spandex! I stumbled across the fabric for this on sale at a Fabricville in town. It’s rayon with 3% spandex, and it was only $26 for the amount I needed for this pattern, so it seemed like a low risk potentially high reward fabric to try this pattern in.
I did most of the sewing on this over the weekend, and finished it up Monday evening. There is a lot that I really love about how this dress came out! I really like the shape of the dress and the crossover back straps (especially that they’re so wide!), and the fabric was a great match. I also love the length and the fact that the princess seams fit pretty great right out of the gate. I made a size 6-8 based on my measurements, and ended up shortening the waistband piece from my initial estimate after trying it on partway through. I’ll talk a bit about the construction below, but adjusting the waist is super easy mid-make.
Weirdly though, despite the fact that I really like THIS particular dress, I don’t know if I’d make another one. It’s strange because I would recommend this pattern and think it’s really flattering, but I think the thing is that I don’t really need multiples of it in my wardrobe. As you can see in the photo below, there’s a bit of puckering at the corners of the neckline. These are much less than when I was trying it on with a regular bra, but if I was going to make it again, I’d want to take a pinch out of that area to prevent the gaping. The other thing is that because of the back, your bra band and straps are super visible if you wear a regular bra, so in these photos I’m wearing my trust stick-on boobs, which have no band or straps (you might be able to see a bit of the indent at the top of my boobs because of them in some of the photos). Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the flexibility the stick-ons can give, but for an every day dress, I’m just not a person who wants to go to that extra effort. I think this would be a great wedding guest dress though, which would be an extra-effort type of occasion anyway, so I could see myself wearing it for a special situation like that.
Another thing is that I paid very close attention to the seam allowances (because it’s 3/8″ instead of 1/2″ or 5/8″), and yet my waistband strip looks way more narrow than the one in the photos on the pattern page. If I make this again, I would widen that strips so that the design detail is more obvious and so that any wavering in width is less noticeable on the larger scale. For the waist, you have a long strip folded in half sewn to the bottom of the bodice, and it sticks out past the back edges. This is why it’s so easy to adjust the waist, because you can just take a bit out of the center back. You then sew the gathered skirt (which has pockets! another plus) to that band, and add an invisible zipper at center back. If you’re paying close attention, you might be realizing that this leaves the raw edge of the back exposed all the way around. You can’t just serge it (I mean, you could but I wouldn’t) because it’ll be visible in the open space at the back, so the instructions have you finish it with double fold bias tape. I cut this out of my self fabric because I knew matching the colour would be a nightmare. It did add stability to the waist as promised, and helped prevent sagging, but I didn’t like the bulk it added to the inside of the waist around the rest of the dress where it wasn’t visible. You might be able to see in some of the pictures that the waist seam allowance was prone to flipping down instead of up, which might be solved by an aggressive steaming, but I was already wearing the dress, so. (As well, I didn’t notice that one of my straps was partially tucked under until after I took the photos. Try not to notice it now. You’re welcome).
A construction detail I thought was really cool is that the bodice has no side seam! The back straps have the curved convex edge of the princess seam on them and they come around from the shoulder all the way to the bust! This did make it a bit hard to match up the side seams of the skirt appropriately when I was attaching it, because there are no side seam notches on the bodice/waist-strip. I think this is because of the customizability of the waistband piece in the pattern, so it would be a mess of notches trying to indicate for all different sizes and waist lengths where the side seam should be, so I get it. I solved the problem by basting the ends of the waist together using the regular seam allowance, putting on the bodice, making a mark where I felt the side would be on one side, and then mirroring it on the other one so they’d be symmetrical. This worked really well, and my pocket placement turned out great! The pocket pieces are a little small, but that’s easily fixed, and the height of the pocket notches was ideal for me. I also forgot to mention – I took an inch out of the bottom of the bodice pieces at center back to prevent puckering where the bodice met the waist. I started 3″ away from the edge and did a diagonal line from there to 1″ inch above the bottom at the center back edge (hopefully that makes sense – comment below if you need clarification).
So! That’s my take on the Esteem dress! I do really like how this dress turned out, even though it might sound like I didn’t like the pattern. I think it is something that can be really flattering on a lot of bodies/shapes, and I love the back!
I mentioned above that I feel a quilt coming on… I’ve had the Violet Craft Elephant Abstractions foundation paper piecing pattern for a long time now, and Atlantic Fabrics had a sale on Kona for their birthday celebrations, so I finally picked up the fabric I need for that yesterday. The only swap I made was that I got a hot pink for the background instead of yellow. I’m itching to start now that my practice teaching term is done and I have more big chunks of free time. Hoping to print out the templates later today!
