Another Freya Dress and Top by Tilly and the Buttons

I first made the Tilly and the Buttons Freya Dress in late 2018. My original dress was a size too small and despite trying to make it work, it eventually became too uncomfortable (and maybe I ate too much in lockdown) so I had to give it away. I made the first dress in a pale green Ponte di Roma fabric and decided to use a Ponte again for my second dress, but this time in a bright lilac colour from The New Craft House. I also chose to add the ruffle to this dress, which when combined with the lilac makes a very girly dress - but why not wear something fun in a pandemic?

The frill was the most time-consuming element of an otherwise, very straightforward pattern. The instructions recommend using your eye as a guide rather than painstakingly measuring the folds on the frill for continuity - but I couldn’t help myself! One thing I would do differently next time is to plan for the frill when laying out the pattern pieces. I left the frill until last and then had to join three pieces together to get enough length. While it’s not very noticeable, there is a join on the front that doesn’t align with the side seam. If you can get one long piece to go the whole way around, that would be best.

I have a bit of an issue with the shoulders on a lot of Tilly’s patterns and found that despite sizing up this time, the shoulders were still quite tight. I did let them out a bit on the dress but probably need to look at doing a combination of a forward-facing and wide shoulder adjustment. Not long after making this dress, I decided to make a top version and totally forgot about the shoulder issues - I trimmed the seam allowance so it was too late to adjust. The shoulders on the top are definitely too tight and seem to pop up rather than sitting on my shoulders. I made the top with a jersey from Sew Me Sunshine, which is slightly less rigid than the Ponte I used for the dress.

I don’t own an overlocker so I make all of my stretch garments on my sewing machine, using a zigzag stitch. I found some of the seams ripped when I made the dress and had to be re-sewn so I used the stretch stitch feature on my machine for the top. This stitch is a lot stronger and hasn’t ripped but it does create a bit of a gathered effect on the seams. I do think this dress could do with a zip somewhere as the structured shape means you really need to use a heavier stretch fabric but then this also doesn’t give enough movement to have such a structured dress without any fastenings.

Given the complications I have had with this pattern, I won’t be making it again without altering the pattern pieces first but it is a really easy make if you can get the fit right.