Oliver + S Family Reunion Dress!

After my recent success with a Oliver + S pattern, (here and here), I was keen to try out another one.
I decided to use the Family Reunion dress pattern

 

This pattern has cute little pintucked pleats on the front and back of the dress, gathered sleeves (what little girls doesn't love a good puff-sleeve?) and a button-up back. 

There are two versions in this pattern, A, which is a dress, and B which is a top. Since its nearing summer I decided to make the dress (View A).

 

So after a brief trip to the craft store (well brief for me, a very long time for my husband sitting in the car), and a few hours cutting and sewing, Voila! We have one very cute summery dress!

 

The fabric is a sweet poly cotton with silver threads (you cant really see it in the photo). 
I decided to use some nice lime coloured buttons for the back, and four darker round green buttons for the detail on the front. (Little Miss I thought they looked like smarties, and tried to bite one! Luckily it didn't break!)

If you look closely (or click on the picture to enlarge it) you can see near the hem six rows of top-stitching! It looks really good, and adds weight to the hem as well. I would like to make this dress in a solid fabric, then use a contrasting thread to make all the stitching really stand out.

I love the pintucks and buttons on the front! I had to remove a few of the front buttons because I was too lazy to transfer the button guide from the pattern. How hard can it be to sew 4 buttons on? Obviously harder than I thought!

I'm really so happy with how this dress turned out. As always Oliver + S patterns are brilliant! They are easy to follow and give super good results!

Of course as soon as I showed my girls the dress, Little Miss E started 'mummy, you make mine?', so I will be posting a second family reunion dress soon I suspect!

One thing that I wanted to share, whenever I use a dress pattern, I am always really bad at transferring the markings onto the fabric (notches, darts, etc). For this dress I using a grey-lead pencil to mark out the pintucks. It was really hard though and I ended up licking the pencil to get it to mark the fabric!

I was talking to the craft store owner about it, and she gave me (well, sold me) a Chaco pen!! Its awesome!!

Its a 'pen', filled with chalk, I got blue, but it comes in different colours. It has a tiny roller on the end and dispenses a tiny, straight line of chalk!

It cost me about $7, and was so worth it! You can get refill chalk for them as well! My pencil-licking days are over!

Ciao!

Jessica