Seamwork Mesa dress

I realise this dress is completely out of season for us southern-hemispherians, but sometimes you find a pattern and fabric combo that can’t wait. I mean, you’re a sewing addict too, so I know you understand. It’s like when a chronic hoarder finds 500 plastic containers on clearance. The heart wants what the heart wants.

The Fabric

My first spoonflower experience! Penny from Smuk Designs has more than 550 designs on Spoonflower (she’s very clever like that) with a great range of prints featuring animals, geometrics and even a little nerd-ery. Penny recently gave me the opportunity to work with one of her prints (lucky!) so I opted for her ‘Snaffle Bit’ print on performance knit fabric. This is the red/grey print, but it’s also available in grey/white, and I love the strong patterning and hint of sophistication it offers.

The performance knit fabric seems to have good stretch and recovery and while it’s more shiny than a standard t-shirt knit fabric, it shouldn’t sag over time like jersey knit does. An important feature for a dress because no-one wants a saggy butt.

The Pattern

I used the Mesa Dress pattern from Seamwork mag; a neat online sewing mag that I recently stumbled across. As a side note, their latest issue has a fascinating segment on denim which I really enjoyed.

For this dress, I cut a size small based on their measurements, but the sizing seems to run a little small and I had to use a 3mm seam allowance throughout to ease the fit. Next time I may size up and will definitely add at least 5cm to the length.

This dress is shorter than anything I’d usually wear, but perfect for a date night with the Husband, who is more than happy with the length (or lack thereof)! I’m 170cm tall, but maybe I have a long torso??

I also added a centre back seam so that I could do my usual sway back adjustment and the fit is definitely better for it. Penny also snapped these pics for me and, I must say, this was one of the most fun photo shoots I’ve ever had. Hilarious snaps followed by a cuppa while the kids enjoy a play date … perfection. Thanks for everything Penny xo The fabric was kindly supplied by Penny at Smuk Designs. All opinions are my own and there are no affiliate links in this post.