By Hand London Anna Dress – Fixed!!!

I haven’t posted about this dress before, even though it was finished back in April, and also happens to be my third Anna Dress from By Hand London. I saw this beautiful cotton voile in a blog post from The Village Haberdashery and just knew I had to have it! (You should totally check out their selection here, I would buy the lot if I could!!!) I wasn’t even sure what it was going to become, but I’ve always wanted a lovely soft summer dress in this kind of pattern, so I bought 1.5m before the photo was even up on the website – guessing from the description and praying I’d chosen the right one! When it arrived it was just as beautiful as I’d hoped, and it washed and tumble-dried wonderfully.

This dress is fairly simple to make – sewing it together is mostly straight lines. In this case a lot of straight lines as I did french seams through out (the inside just had to look as beautiful as the outside). I chose not to line it as even though the fabric is so light weight its not particularly transparent, and I figured it would be lovely and cool in the hot weather – I just wear a slip under it if necessary. This was the first time I tried making the slash neck, as my first two were both v-neck’s which after taking 2″ out of the back fit perfectly. Unfortunately this neckline just didn’t sit right even after taking the 2″ out of the back. It’s hard to see in the awful photo’s but it was all baggy at the top a bit like a cowl neck – obviously I’m missing the necessary assets to fill it out . I tried to embrace this look thinking maybe it would be ok, but after a couple of wears I just couldn’t take it anymore, it had a whole saggy boob feel to it, unbearable! So it hung there on the side of my wardrobe mocking me, the fabric so pretty, the fit so bad, the unpicking – YUK! *Sad face*

Finally today I bit the bullet, I tried unpicking the front neckline (voile is not fun to unpick) and took 1.5″ out from the centre, curving back up to meet the back piece and reattaching it to the facing, but of course that didn’t work as it would’ve been too easy. After that I was totally fed up, (would I ever rescue this lovely fabric!!!!!!) so I hacked off the neckline at the front below the topstitching with some nice big fabric shears – that felt satisfying! I put it on and pinched out the excess fabric, turning it into 4 1/2″ pleats then sewed it all back together, and amazingly it worked! This is now my favorite dress ever, so pretty and so comfy! And with only 4″ in total taken out from the neckline?! I guess at least I’ll know for next time!