Can you tell I’m stuck at home with lots of fabric and time to sew? It’s been kind of jarring, to be honest. A little over two weeks ago was my last day of university classes (hopefully ever!), and then two days later distancing started and I’ve gone from SO much to do to not being able to leave the house. Hence all the blog posts lately! I cut and sewed this Roscoe dress in one day, just like my recent Charlie caftan – something they have in common is a lack of zippers/buttons, which really speeds things along.
I’d been looking at the True Bias Roscoe dress pattern for a while, but honestly didn’t think it was a good fit for me and my style. Even after hearing Kelli say on her episode of the Love to Sew podcast (which I realize now came out more than two years ago…) that her favourite out of her patterns was the Roscoe, I still wasn’t really on board. But I kept seeing more and more versions online and it slowly changed my mind and here we are! I bought this squishy black double gauze from Fabricville a while ago with this pattern specifically in mind. It’s super soft and has a lot of texture/crinkle, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it softens with time and washing. I think in future I will try to style it with a small belt or other cord in a contrasting colour/material, but for now I am stuck with what I have in my house, and what happened to be in my house was a leftover length of drawstring that came in my Kelly Anorak hardware kit from Closet Case. Sometimes you have to make do!
I read a bunch of blog posts about this pattern before I picked a size, because based on my experience with the Southport dress and sizing in that, I was wary to cut the size indicated by the size chart. (Aside: I LOVE my maxi Southport dress and once I’m done making the armholes a bit bigger, you’ll hopefully see it in this space!). My measurements are 37.5″/29.5″/39.5″, which puts me firmly in a size 10 according to the True Bias charts. HOWEVER, the size I made was a size 4. Yup. Three sizes smaller than my measurements indicated. And it’s still a loose fit! The only thing I would generally warn about when it comes to sizing down with True Bias is that I do think she intends certain styles to be a bit looser, and the main issue I’ve had in the past when doing a radically smaller size is the armholes, as mentioned regarding the Southport. I was worried that the same thing would happen with the Roscoe, but it didn’t! I think maybe because it’s a raglan sleeve, it’s more forgiving than a set-in sleeve armscye, because I still find I have lots of space to raise my arms and have room in the armpit area.
If I make another Roscoe dress (will decide after I see how it fits into my wardrobe once I can go out in the world), there’s a few adjustments I would make. I think I’d shorten the neck ties, because I don’t think they need to be that long on me. This is the longest length of the pattern, and I do think the length works on me, but I’m also curious to try the shorter length dress version. For work purposes, I think I would make the front neckline dip a little less low in future, which is a VERY easy adjustment to do based on the way it’s constructed. Finally, I think I would either shorten the sleeve (to bring the cuff up to a slightly wider part of my forearm) OR make the cuff more narrow, which would also be very easy to do because the sleeve is just gathered to fit the cuff size. Does anyone have any thoughts on that – shorter sleeve or more narrow cuff?
Overall, I’m happy I tried the Roscoe pattern! It was a quick make, although I got a biiit gather-tired by the end of it. You have to gather the neckline to the binding, the sleeves to their cuffs, and the ruffle to the bottom of the skirt. I ignored the instructions about how far from the edge to sew my gathering stitches and just did it my normal way. I sew one line 1/8″ inside the indicated seam allowance (in this case it was 1/2″ so I sewed at 3/8″) and then one line 1/4″ outside of the seam allowance. This means that along the seam allowance you can get completely perpendicular gathers for your stitch line to sew across, and you won’t get any rogue gathers going in a strange direction! Works every time for me, which I think is why I have less of a bee in my bonnet about gathers compared to a lot of sewists!
I’m not sure what’s up next on my sewing table! Trying to give myself the brain space to sew whatever I want to whenever I want to instead of feeling like I have a mental queue. I do have pre-washed fabric and the pattern for the Wiksten shift dress bopping around and am intrigued to try that pattern as well, but I might also just end up doing some quilting! I’m waiting on some DMC pearl cotton to use for hand-quilting, which is a slow process I find myself more and more wanting to dig into. I’ve hand-quilted a quilt before, but it’s been YEARS since I felt like it, so I’m leaning into that feeling.
