Rooibos dress progress

I’m slowly working my way through the Colette pattern collection, and I’ve finally begun working on my favorite of the dresses: Rooibos.  

I picked out a basic red cotton for the dress, and a fun print that I reserved for another top... but had picked up a little excess just for this dress.  

Marking the darts on the bust.

I was a little concerned that the dress would be really difficult due to the number of pieces in the pattern.  Surprisingly I've only had a couple of moments where I've had to slow down to make sure I followed the directions exactly.  One of which was finishing the sleeve portion of the top.  I had never worked with a side zipper (only back) so this was the first time I'd encountered this method of sewing the lining to the outer fabric.

Fabric is rolled and the two right sides are matched.

Initially I rolled the fabric and pinned the sleeve edges in place... until I started thinking about how it would be attached to itself.  I read the directions a couple of times and realized that the directions were telling me to take the fabric around the rolled edges so that the right sides matched.  Once I did this, I stitched the pieces in place, inverted the top and... eureka!  It worked! Then I repeated and did the same to the other edge.  I still don't fully understand the logic of what I really did, but it worked and was very exciting.

Progress on the top.  I pinned down the front flap pieces just to see how it looked.

Beginning to match up the pockets with the outer dress pieces.

The next part that gave me some difficulty was the matching of the pocket/outer dress pieces.  Attaching the pocket lining wasn't difficult, I just was a little confused by the different sizes of the lining.  I literally had to step away from the sewing machine for a little break.  Once I returned, I did the same as before and pieced the pattern pieces to the best of my ability.  It helped once I matched up the center panel of the dress and saw where the notches were supposed to be placed.  Once again, success!


I'll post the final dress details soon.  I'm really happy with how it's been turning out and I've been learning a lot in the process.