This weeks Crafty Bloggers Club post is from Gemma, you can find more of her makes on Instagram @thedailythread

Hi everyone,

I’m delighted to be joining the Crafty Sew and So team as part of their Crafty Blogger’s Club and I’m excited to share my blog post with you all!

When I was given the choice of patterns and fabric, I changed my mind soooo many times, but I finally decided on The Zadie dress by Tilly and the Buttons and matched this with the aqua coloured ponte roma from the Crafty Sew and So website. They have a lot of wonderful colours of ponte on there and I was definitely tempted by the mustard colour as well, but I thought the aqua would go well with some left over dark green/teal ponte I had in my stash that I planned to use for some of the panels on the dress.

I love sewing with ponte – if you’re new to sewing with jersey then give this a try as it is a very stable fabric, and this one from Crafty Sew and So is very good quality.

I’ve never made the Zadie dress before and this is a pattern for improvers – I tend to class myself somewhere between a confident beginner and an intermediate/improver, but I didn’t feel intimidated by this at all. The pattern itself is a little more complicated than other jersey makes just because of the amount of panels. Part of the fun is deciding if you want to colour block it like I did, or stick to one colour all over. I played around with the coloured panels, but finally decided to do most of the dress in the aqua colour and accent it with side panels and a neck band in the darker green.

One part of this make that I got completely wrong was when it came to inserting the sleeves – I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “three times lucky?” well that’s what happened here haha! It’s completely my fault for not looking closely enough at the diagrams (I thought I had done but obviously not!). This made the neckline really small, and I knew it wasn’t right but obviously made the same mistake twice doh! As the sleeves are raglan sleeves, they have three points at which they could attach, so make sure you choose the right one!

Another tricky bit on this pattern is when you sew up the side seams – the side panels should make a neat point, so Tilly advises you to hand stitch first ensuring everything meets up, and then sew it up on your machine. It’s a little fiddly, but if you take your time, it should be fine.

The Zadie dress has some lovely features including huge pockets and some cute pleats to the front and back which add some shape. If you’re after a casual jersey dress with a full skirt then Zadie is your girl.

As ponte is quite a weighty fabric, this has meant my dress is quite heavy and thick – that’s absolutely fine with me though as this will make the perfect addition to my autumn and winter wardrobe.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through my blog post and that it’s inspired you to have a go at the Zadie dress yourself. Go and check out the range of ponte roma fabric on the Crafty Sew and So website if you do want to give it a try.

Until next time, happy sewing and take care!

Gemma x

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“Crafty Bloggers Club Contributors are given products and materials to test from Crafty Sew&So. We hope you enjoy their honest and impartial reviews of the products. All opinions are their own.”