The Out-Of-Office Work Dress

This dress was meant to be a new office-appropriate winter dress for resuming normal work. But we're still working from home for the foreseeable future, so instead it's office-appropriate dressing for my desk in my lounge room at home.

The lovely fabric is from The Fabric Store, and was a remnant I picked up last winter. The fabric is double sided orange and ruby, so it obviously needed a pattern that would show both. The orange side is merino, the ruby is nylon. It's a stable knit, so it's very easy to work with and maintains its shape very well.

I had initially been thinking of making a 1960s mod-style dress with contrasting bands at the neckline, waist, sleeve bands and hem, but I couldn't find a pattern that matched the image in my head. As the fabric is a remnant piece I had a limited amount of fabric, so I was a bit unsure about coming up with a dress without a pattern. So I decided to do some image searching for two tone dresses for inspiration, and found a few wrap dresses that looked really great.

After looking through different patterns, I found one that I thought would work well in two colours. The pattern is a Nancy Zieman wrap dress for McCalls, M7893. This is version A with an asymmetrical hem but with the longer sleeves of version B. The two sides of the asymmetrical hem are designed to reach a neat point, but as soon as you stop standing perfectly still they do move out of place.

While the dress is two toned, the pattern isn't. The back piece in the pattern is cut on the fold, rather than as two pieces. Cutting the back as two pieces was easy enough, but making sure I laid out the left and right fronts and each sleeve correctly so all the left side would be orange and the right side red took a bit more care. I also used matching threads for each side, changing over when I reached the centre back.

 It's unfortunate this dress isn't quite getting the wears I intended for it this year because I really like it. I'm still wearing it a bit, but it's not really an at home dress. Luckily the fabric is lovely and great quality, so even if the weather is starting to warm up now, there will be many other winters for it to be worn.

Ruska Jumper Dress

Another new make that's been in my wardrobe getting worn for more than a month. It has already been getting a reasonable amount of wear, and is comfortable for working from home while still being both relaxed and presentable for video meetings. 

This is the Ruska Knot Dress from Named Patterns' book, Breaking the Pattern. It's a great pattern book, with lots of options for each pattern and some potential for mixing and matching across patterns. My version is the straight knot dress but with the longer sleeves. 

The dress has a double front. The under dress is fitted and cut in one piece, while the knot overlay is cut in two pieces, stitched together down the front until it reaches the ties. It's connected in together along the seams, which means taking care to ensure no layers slip out of place, especially when connecting the sleeves and neckband. 

The fabric is a jumper knit from My Hung Fabrics. It's a lovely baby pink and charcoal mix - it definitely looks more pink in reality than in the photographs. It's quite soft and stretchy, but the ribbed fabric holds its shape well enough to work for the pattern. It's reversible, so there's no worry about the "wrong" side showing on the knot section. 

Unfortunately the fabric was absolutely terrible to work with. It falls apart and frays very easily, which means it had to be overlocked. But at the same time all the bits of fluff coming off got caught in the overlocker, almost clogging it. A couple of times on the longer seams I had to use tweezers to remove pieces of  thread caught behind the bottom blade. Once I finished sewing the dress I completely opened both the sewing machine and overlocker up in order to give them a thorough cleanout.

This dress is very comfy and cosy while still looking put together, very much a secret pyjamas pattern. Especially made out of this knit, it really does feel like a giant fancy looking jumper. And a giant fancy looking jumper is always great to wear.