Women's Swing Dress by Seamingly Smitten
/Hi, I’m Teronia from Crazy Crafty Haute Mama and I’m SEW excited to be here, today. Thanks so much to the wonderful ladies at Pattern Revolution for inviting to review the adorable Women’s Swing Dress with Pleated Front from Seamingly Smitten.
This is a simple swing dress with a center pleat at the bodice and a racer back. The instructions are pretty straight forward and would be a pretty quick sew for everyone else. I, however, did my typical thing and sewed it up in about three hours, but let me tell you something: I HATE to seam rip so I spent a lot of time carefully reading the instructions and re-orienting my fabric to get it just right. Now, I will admit that this was my first SS pattern so I was really curious as to what I would find and I wasn’t disappointed.
While the pattern is for beginners and you can totally manage this, I think the little details up your sewing technique knowledge. The racerback is probably my favorite part of this dress. I live in Florida and there is nothing like a cute little diva dress with a racerback for the 305 days of heat all year. For an added touch there’s a center bodice pleat. I thought that it added a little sophistication to the dress making it lunch date worthy.
The pattern is made for knit fabrics, but has instructions for using wovens. I used a woven with just the tiniest bit of stretch and lots of drape for the main fabric and lined it with kona cotton. Per the pattern directions I went up two sizes. I was a little worried because I’m mostly an XS with a big-ish bust and I had to make a medium, but the fit came out perfect on the first try! This dress is flowy and comfortable without seeming to swallowing me.
There are instructions for optional understitiching which I did complete, but I did not topstitch. Also, I did a full lining because I didn’t want my dress to fly away in the wind. There are cutting lines for Tall, Petite and Regular length as well as Regular and Petite width which I thought was awesome and completely unexpected in a PDF sewing pattern. Because I’m somewhere around 5’ 3” I cut my main fabric to regular length using the petite width and cut my lining to the petite length and width.
I’m really feeling this pattern and plan to make more for the spring and summer. It came out super cute plus, I’m loving sporting my pretty Nicole Miller fabric from Joann Fabrics. I just have to say that if you haven’t made any of Jenny’s patterns I definitely recommend starting with this one. Thanks for having me!
Teronia shares her version of the Off the Shoulder Top by Seamingly Smitten.