The Bridgetown Backless

Saying that this dress has been in the making for a long time is an understatement. Really. I’ve wanted to make a Bridgetown Backless dress by Sew House Seven ever since I bought the pattern as part of the Indiesew Summer Collection 2015. I even bought this tencel sateen fabric from Miss Matatabi in August 2015, especially for the Bridgetown Backless dress! And I taped the pattern ….

And then other projects came along. Every time I saw the pretty sateen on my fabric shelf, I thought of the Bridgetown and felt bad. Then Annika from Näh-Connection translated the pattern into German and I finally had a good reason to make the dress.

Although the dress looks colour-blocked, I actually only used one fabric. The rayon sateen has a taupe colour, and a wide blue stripe along one selvedge. I chose to cut the skirt pieces flipped to the side, ending up with a “colour-blocked” hem. I had just enough blue left to cut the sleeve pieces out of the blue fabric too. I really like how it looks!

I chose to sew a size 0 and not to lengthen the bodice, but I lengthened the skirt by several centimetres. Had I made a muslin, I might have chosen to make a size 2, or to at least lengthen the bodice by 1/2″ / 1 – 1.5 cm. I’ve seen other Bridgetown Backless dresses that had a much deeper neckline at the back than my dress – and I think that’s party because I didn’t use a fabric with stretch, and partly because I should have widened the shoulders or made a bigger size. You can see some folds at the front – I think those might go away when sizing up, too. The big advantage with the rather high neckline is that I can easily wear my Bridgetown the other way around, too! It looks equally nice that way, doesn’t it?

I was in quite a hurry when sewing the dress, since I was about to travel to Switzerland to meet some great sewing bloggers. The rayon sateen seems to be slightly brushed, and somehow I managed to grease something onto one side of the back bodice. Until today I’m not quite sure what it was, but I suspect it might have been very thin interfacing that got totally dissolved on the brushed fabric, leaving a white stain that looked to be much more in the fabric than on the fabric.

I tried to wash the stain out, I scrubbed the stain, I washed the whole bodice in the washing machine – all of that late at night the day before I travelled to Switzerland. In the end, the stain was gone enough to make it worth while to continue sewing. But I can still see a faint stain and the shiny fabric has suffered a little at the back. Oh well, there’s nothing to be done about it!

The rayon sateen needed to be sewn carefully, something I obviously didn’t have the time for, either. You can see how the binding on the inside of the curved edges causes some drag lines right along the neckline. It’s not that bad, and it’s totally wearable, but I should have been a little more careful while attaching the binding.

All in all, taking into consideration that I didn’t muslin, that I run out of time, and that I nearly managed to destroy the fabric, I’m very happy with the result! This is a super cute easy-to-wear beach dress. The beach in Årstein in Lofoten, where my father-in-law grew up and my in-laws have their summer-house, was just the perfect place for taking pictures. Somehow most pics turned out a tiny bit blurry, I really don’t know why. Sorry about that! But the beachy atmosphere was so fitting for this dress that I really wanted to use these pics anyway.

You can buy the Indiesew Summer 2015 collection here, or purchase only the Bridgetown Backless dress at Indiesew, on the Sew House Seven homepage or buy the German translation at Näh-Connection.