The Tea House Dress blog tour

The fabulous Tea House Dress blog tour is finally here and today it’s my turn to show you my version. I made the dress and took the pictures about a month ago and have been dying to share them with you!

As you might know, a group of great sewing bloggers decided to have a little blog tour, showcasing different versions of the Tea House Dress by Sew House Seven. I got wind of the plan and was lucky enough to be allowed to hop on board.

The blog tour wasn’t something Peggy, the designer, initiated, but rather something we just were eager to do after seeing the first photos of the newly released dress. Nelleke from Gaafmachine deserves a big thank you for organizing and hosting this blog tour! (Keep on reading, there’s a giveaway, too!)

The Tea House Dress is a wide dress with kimono style sleeves, a v-neck, slanted pockets and a sash. It can be made in a midi or in knee length – the version I made. You can also make a tunic version to wear the dress as a top. Beside the different lengths you can choose to make the dress with a wide sash, sewn into the side seams, as I did, or with a thin sash and a casing at the back. Since the dress is so wide, there’s no need for buttons or zippers, the dress can simply be pulled over the head.

The dress looks great in flowy and stiffer fabrics alike. Especially the sleeves look so great when made of a fabric with some body! That’s why I decided to look for a stiffer fabric, and as so often, I ended up finding fabric at Miss Matatabi. The fabric is a medium-weight cotton barkcloth, not as stiff as canvas, but with an amazing bark-like structure.

I especially love the fact that the fabric pattern itself reminds me of bark – it’s a perfect match for the fabric’s texture! You need a lot of fabric for this dress, but you might get away with slightly less if you don’t have to pattern match. I ordered 3.5 meters of 110 cm wide fabric. I still have some fabric left and I didn’t have to squeeze the pattern pieces together. I still had enough fabric to be able to decide freely where I wanted the green stripes to appear.

The only pieces I didn’t cut out of the main fabric were the front and back yoke facings. As you can see I decided to turn the fabric by 90 degrees when cutting the front and back yoke, to play a little with the stripes. That’s what Peggy did with this dark blue dress, and I loved the idea!

I made the smallest size but lengthened the skirt to a size 8. Maybe I also should have lengthened the bodice slightly. The sash is supposed to sit pretty high, but looking at the designer’s photos I think it should sit slightly lower than my sash does. But it’s really not a problem, I still love my dress and am wearing it a lot – when the weather in Tromsø allows…  Otherwise I didn’t make any changes to the dress.

You need to print and to tape a lot of pages to assemble the pattern, but cutting the pieces is actually done pretty quickly, since most pattern pieces are fairly big. The same goes for sewing the dress, it’s not very difficult and done pretty quickly. You can decide if you want to sew the facing by hand or if you want to topstitch the yoke to attach the facing. I decided to sew the facing by hand, and since I’m not a great hand sewist, that’s the part that took me the longest.

The pattern instructions are very thorough and well thought through, which ensures you a well fitting and well finished garment.

The dress is incredibly comfortable to wear and getting the fit right isn’t that big of an issue, since you ty the dress anyway. I’d love to make another version, maybe the longer one, in a more neutral fabric – maybe gray wool or natural linen?

But on to the giveaway! Head over to Gaafmachine and comment on this post to win a copy of the Tea House Dress pattern and 6 (yes 6!!) fabric from LA Finch Fabrics! The winner is picked randomly next week. And the Tea House Dress pattern is on sale until Friday, too! Just use the code TEA25 to get 25% off.

And don’t forget to check out the other participants of the blog tour!

August 9th: Rebel and Malice/Gaafmachine/Stahlarbeit

August 10th: In a manner of sewing/Sew happy/Mottenfrosch 

August 11th: Sew Mariefleur/KreaMino/Fairies, Bubbles & Co./Frölein Tilia

August 12th: Made by Sara/Just Add Fabric/Little Cumquat

– This post is linked to the German blogger party RUMS. –