Long Country Road

A sunny floral maxi dress to start wrapping up the warm weather season before the cold starts to set in and I get stuck into making winter gear….After having a much too long break from blogging due to a new job and life in general, I decided to use our very short camping trip location over the Easter break (only one night – can’t get shorter than that!) to photograph this daffodil print satin maxi dress.

When I saw this fabric at Lincraft ages ago, it was love at first sight! I love maxi dresses with a mega print of some sort on them (not easy to find) and this was definitely destined for a maxi. The fabric has a beautiful flow to it and is beautifully slippery but not too shiny. I love that the print is only in the middle and there is white on both sides.

Not sure of exactly which style of maxi I would make, I bought quite a few metres of the fabric and then went back and bought a bit more for an airy loose top! So you may see that coming up in a future blog, when I get around to it….you know how it is – sew much fabric, sew little time…!

This is another one of my famous no-pattern makes. I just measured the length I would need for the dress plus a little more just in case and used the complete width of the fabric. When I realised that it would be too see-through without lining, I used some cotton voile in white to line the whole dress. So it’s not see-through but also still very light and has heaps of room for movement.

Michael Kors had some summer dresses in the past that used a thicker chain or necklace as a closure for around the neck and I had always wanted to make one, so I thought that would be just perfect for this dress. I found a very affordable, somewhat thicker gold chain at Lovisa that I thought and hoped would hold the dress up! It was going to either be gathered or pleated around the neck part and after trying both out, I decided to pleat it because it would lie flat and not be too bulky with the two layers of fabric. I folded over the pleating after securing it with lots of big hand stitching and made a tunnel to pull the chain through. Then I machine sewed the tunnel and pulled the hand stitching out.

The front of the dress is exactly the same as the back and the sides are just sewn together with enough of a slit left and right for the arms to move freely and still wear an unseen strapless bra. The hem is very small and just machine sewn.

Once again, I love that this dress has no zip and just slips on over my head by opening the necklace and fixing it again to close. Too easy!

I love to wear this dress with heels because I am not very tall, but it also looks great with elegant flat sandals or even bare feet!

There was one strip of fabric left over and I use it as either a head piece or belt. I hand stitched the hem by rolling the edges and just barely catching the fabric to make it as invisible as possible. Using the fabric strip as a belt makes the dress more versatile and gives it a completely different shape and look. I think a nude colour leather belt or a gold chain belt would also work well.

  

Depending on how this maxi is worn, it really has a 70s vibe to it, especially with the head scarf!

Someone forgot to water this tree…

Finishing off the dress, I had to try it on a few times with flats and heels to decide on the length, as I wanted to leave both options open. It should be a little longer to wear with heels, but then I would be stepping on it in flats…sometimes you just can’t win…I probably don’t wear this gorgeous dress enough, but who does, when you have so much to choose from as a fanatical sewer and fashion lover with a too small, tightly packed wardrobe?

Styling:  hat: no name brand from Myer, amber and silver bracelet: bought from little boutique in Gdansk, Poland, amber and silver ring: custom made in Poland, sunglasses: Margot by Tom Ford, shoes: Apart Fashion (German Fashion label), gold chain in dress: Lovisa