Minerva Exclusive Poppy dress

Jun 1

Jun 1 Minerva Exclusive Poppy dress

Finally a new make, this one has been months in the making for a range of reasons but now it's finished!

This is the poppy dress, a Minerva Exclusive pattern. I jumped on this as soon as it was released because I love a shirt dress and I love flouncy sleeves!

For fabric I picked a fairly light weight chambray for maximum versatility, I've been very drawn to navy recently. I think this will be great to style with different colours and accessories

I made a size H, which is the same as in the Tracey jacket I made recently. As I was trying it on before adding the buttons I did worry it was going to be too tight around the bust and was kicking myself for not measuring from scratch. But I was committed at that point and turns out I needn't have worried at all, it fits completely fine!

This is quite an involved make, and the instructions are very detailed and thorough. I do remember I was having some issues with attaching the curved button bands, although I had such a big break in the middle I don't remember what my problem actually was! Which in any case I managed to solve

I also omitted the belt loops, purely because I somehow managed to miss that pattern piece, which will have ended up in recycling with the rest of the remaining paper. I obviously could draft my own, but I wanted it finished so I haven't for now

As always, making the buttonholes with my machine was slightly anxiety inducing, but 7 turned out perfect, two I had to restart and make slightly off centre, but did complete, and one I had to manually add the longer stitches at the bottom and top of the buttonhole. By the standards of my usual bottonholes I will call that a success, and I don't think you can tell the two off centre ones at all.

If I had one criticism of this pattern is that I don't understand why the underarm bit of the flounce is so much wider than the top - the pattern piece is kind of an egg shape. It just feels like too much fabric in a place where you don't actually see it. I think I would prefer it to be an even shape or even smaller in the underarm and if I make this again I would probably adjust in that way

I've also seen on the Minerva website that lots of people have made this as a blouse, which I think is a great idea, I will maybe try that! I think the dress version would also be fab in a print as well