A Reversible Arum Dress

Two dresses in one!

When I found this glorious sparkly jacquard knit fabric at the New Craft House open day I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it, but I thought some kind of shift dress would work well. Then I remembered I had the Deer and Doe Arum dress pattern from when I got over-excited during a sale and bought 3 Deer and Doe ones all at once. (Stay tuned for the other two!)

Once I got home and investigated the fabric fully I realised both sides were wonderful and either would make a great dress. With only enough fabric for one, the obvious answer was to make it reversible! This is one of those situations where being naive is great - I didn’t realise just how much work I was getting myself in for. After a few mostly unsuccessful Google searches + a bit of imagination I decided flat felled seams and some kind of binding for the hems would be the way to go.

This pattern was more perfect for this project than I first realised, due to the grown-on sleeves. This avoided having to flat fell seam a set-in sleeve. (Is that even possible?)

After looking at the size chart I cut a size 42 top graded to a 40 from the waist down and added 7.5cm to the length. I went on the small side of my measurements because I was using a knit fabric so didn’t have to worry too much about getting it on and off. Thanks to the simple lines of this dress (just 4 pieces) I was able to machine baste it together and try it on for size. I discovered that I could take it in even further at the waist and hips so after a more than a few attempts (and stabbing myself with many pins) I managed to get the princess seams fitting in the way I preferred. I didn’t know where to begin with fitting the grown-on sleeves properly so I just left them as is. I was slightly concerned with how tight the sleeves were on my biceps so I sewed the shoulder and underarm seams with a slightly smaller seam allowance to allow for that. In a future version of this dress I would definitely widen the sleeves.

A dress with only 4 pattern pieces comes together very quickly.

Time to get started with the flat felled seams! After sewing one whole garment with flat felled seams (SewHouse7 Free Range Slacks) I was obviously an expert and had nothing to worry about. I chose some grey thread to mostly blend into both sides (more on that later) and got to the sewing.

I soon realised there was going to be a problem when it came to the sleeves, how do I sew the final line of stitching for the seam when the garment is sewn together in a tube? A Google search later I realised the answer was to just do it - and try your best to keep the rest of the fabric out of the way. This was actually easier than expected, though if I was doing it again I would sew the side seams first, then the shoulder seams and finally the princess seams. Obviously I did it completely opposite to that this time.

Where is the seam? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Next step - neckline, sleeve and bottom hems. I tried out the clean finish binding method on one sleeve first to check it would give a finish I was happy with. After sewing it on twice(!) the wrong way around, I went to sleep and the next morning was able to sew it correctly and move onto the neckline. Instead of straight bias binding I just used the neckline facing pieces and cut them down to a binding width. This meant the pattern was going the right way around the neckline and made for a cleaner finish in my opinion. After sewing this on I took a look in the mirror wearing the dress white side out and had a couple of issues. Firstly, the grey thread was way too obvious around the neckline and secondly the multiple places where I had slightly veered off the 1.5cm width were very obvious. I could carry on and just relegate the white side to a super #sewprettyinside effort but I knew I would regret it.

Dark grey thread against white just wasn't going to cut it.

Much better.

I decided that a better option would be to use a different colour top thread and bobbin thread. This worked really well for this fabric because the pattern meant that any tiny bits of the wrong colour thread that appeared would not be obvious. I also began getting very pedantic about my measuring and pressing for the rest of the binding. Some unpicking and resewing later I was ready for the hem of the dress. I measured my ideal length and realised I was cutting off the exact width that I needed for the binding of the hem. This happy accident turned out very much in my favour as now even the princess seams match up on the hem binding. If I ever attempted a reversible dress again I would definitely make the length and the sleeves extra long to allow for this.

A lovely hem.

So final thoughts? I’m super happy with how this dress turned out and I’m glad I put in the extra effort to make the white side wearable too. My one slight disappointment with this fabric is that is does seem to crease a bit after I’ve been sitting in it for a while… but that’s a very small complaint. I love the extreme versatility of this dress (two outfits in one!) and I think I will get a lot of wear out of it.

Taking these photos on the greyest of grey London days.

Because of the sleeves I can only wear very loose things over this dress, but my pink cord jacket works perfectly!