Mama and me dresses, aka Another March Dress & Nora Dress

So, I realise that I haven’t actually shared my other dresses that I made with the Helen’s Closet patterns March dress and top pattern yet, but mummy and me photos will always jump to the front of the blogging queue! So, more March details to follow in a separate blog post – that’s the first disclaimer. For now, let’s focus on matchy matchy. Although, here’s the second disclaimer. I realise that these are different dresses so we’re not completely matching…onto the fabric and patterns.

I didn’t actually set out to make matching dresses, although I do like to buy a little extra fabric in the hope I’ll manage to squeeze out an extra matching item for my daughter. And that’s what happened with this lovely lightweight linen from Fabworks. If you haven’t come across the shop before, I highly recommend checking them out as they sell lovely quality fabrics for pretty low prices.

The linen is pretty lightweight and so quite sheer, so it’s perfect for lightweight summer garments. This colourway is called blackcurrant candy stripes – at the time of writing they also have a pink colourway and an orange one. The pink is lovely and I thought about buying that, but since my daughter fell in love with purple I’ve been more interested in adding it to my wardrobe too, and this seemed like a good opportunity. At only £12 per metre, it seemed a pretty low price for linen.

I bought it with the intention of making a March dress with contrasting stripes after seeing one of the Helen’s Closet website. I had 3m of it, and by leaving the pockets out of the dress, I found that I had enough to make a matching dress for my daughter, with even more leftover to make some summer baby gifts.

My intention was to make an interesting detail with the bib, and so I cut the bib pieces on the cross grain for that playful stripe placement.

I took my dress on our recent holiday to Greece. I’d been making it during short sewing sessions in the evenings over a few weeks, and managed to finish it the weekend before we went away, as part of the Fold Line’s online Sewing Weekender. I spent that weekend sewing so many items that were partly finished, and was so proud with what I managed to achieve! And had lovely new garments to wear on holiday. I really needed a few new dresses, so was delighted to finish my March dress.

I made my daughter’s dress a few weeks after we go back. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll probably recognise the pattern as being the Oh Me Oh My Sewing Nora dress – another tried and tested pattern that I’ve made quite a few versions of now. She loves purple, and I thought it’d be fun to play with the stripe placement too. I did this by cutting the skirt pieces on the cross-grain.