A few weeks ago, I was invited by Melissa from the Wearable Studio to test her latest pattern – Heidi(which at the moment you can also get for free if you sign up to their newsletter).

This is a simple summer dress, which makes it a perfect make for my holiday in the sun in a few months time. I used some melons linen mix fabric.

To make my dress I cut a size 10 because I wanted my dress to be a bit more fitted, I sewed the side seams with a 1.5 cm seam allowance not the recommended one of 1 cm. It came together pretty fast at the style is very simple, with 6 pattern pieces ( front, back, facings for from and back and rectangles for the straps and ties).
I finished the exposed seams throughout construction on the overlocker.

To keep the facings down I tend to turn to the wrong side and sew the seam allowance of the facings to the main body seam allowances, making the hand stitching redundant.

The facings were under-stitched once they were attached to the neckline to keep the facings from peeking onto the right side (included in the instructions).

When I started making my dress I was not sure how long I wanted it to be, so I did not shorten it from the beginning.  I worked with the original length with the intention to try the dress on before I hem it. Once I tried it on, I decided that the dress will look better if it’s above my knees so I would have to shorten it by 6 cm. However, rather than cut it, I have done a deep hem instead, which meant that I needed to do a 4.5cm deep double hem.

There you have it my little fun summer dress.

After looking at the pictures, for my nextversion of this dress, I’ll raise the ties about 3 cm, they seem a bit low on my back. I think the idea of shaping the dress with ties and back pleats is cute. A bit of a change from the same old, same old darts.

The pattern instructions are beginner friendly and include a series of little tips to make construction easy if you don’t know all the terms/techniques. Also, they include plenty of diagrams, so if you are more of a visual person like me you can use them to understand what the written instruction is better.

Will I be making another Heidi dress? Most probably! I will consider adding pockets to it, though. Whenever I wear it, I want to put my hands in pockets.

And remember, you can get this pattern for free if you sign up to the Wearable Studio newsletter.