Sewing pattern review: The Laneway Dress

Uuuuuuuuh I’ve discovered something and simply couldn’t resist. 🙂

The Laneway Dress by Jennifer Lauren Handmade.

The Style

A super sweet dress in the 40s style with a charming neckline AND – and that was for me the decisive factor – different cup sizes. Namely: B, C & D.

I admit that I was nevertheless very skeptical, because so far I unfortunately have not had very good experiences with “general sizing” sewing patterns. My dress size with a D- rather DD-cup in combination with a very very narrow back and pronounced shoulders, many sewing pattern didn’t turn out – no matter how much I adjusted them – as they should. But what am I supposed to say…. I liked the look of this pattern so much, I simply had to give it a try.

Testversion

So I sewed a test-version in size 8 with a D cup! And wow….. only 3 little adjustments at the upper part and it already fitted. YEAH!

These are the adjustments I made:
1. I moved the outer waist dart around 0.8cm to the side-seam, so that the fabric of the front part fits properly around the roundness of my busts.
2. I also moved the side seams a little to make the upper front a little wider and the back more narrow.
3. And since I have very protrudent shoulder blades, I reduced the width of the v-neck on the back, so that it does not collapse between my shoulder blades.

DONE! And I am kind of speechless, I already had all my standard adjustments (which are normally up to 10) in mind, but no!

However…. I just made one small change to the “Look”, since I am not a very big fan of sleeves. After all, it’s summer and the dress is supposed to be for the 70th birthday of my Dad in July.

Well, but can you really call that a “change”? After all, I just dropped the sleeves, and since I do not like bias binding I made the facings a bit bigger.

This is how my facings look now:

Pattern pieces: (copied from the main upper dress pattern and shortened it)

My dress from the inside:

In this sewing method, the facings are sewn together at the shoulders, just like at the upper part of the “outer” dress. Then the facing is placed on the “outer” dress, right sides facing and stitched together at the neckline and armholes. I then always cut into the seam allowance (stop right before the seam) and turn everything to the outside, by pulling the backs through the shoulders.

Result

And this is how MY Laneway Dress looks like:
fabric: Stoff & Stil
1. dress: twill (cotton, colour: petrol)
2. facing, neckline: cotton fabric

My conclusion

I really hope that Jennifer will design many more sewing patterns with different cup-sizes, because I am absolutely impressed by the fit + her style and would recommend the sewing pattern without restriction. I even guess – because of the construction – that women who fit into figure-hugging ready-to-wear clothes, will get along without any adjustments. The instructions are also very well written, although only available in English, but due to the good illustrations still very easy to understand!

And by the way…. this is not going to be my last version of this dress, I really love this pattern! Thanks Jennifer!

Note to myself: Take photos before wearing a new selfmade outfit a whole day! 😉