Lovely Reta Dress

I named this dress after a friend of mine who has great style and bows are kind of a signature for her. The bow and bias tape ribbon detail was inspired by this guest post by Cation for 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World. I love clean little details, like piping!

I knew I wanted a fitted dress with a classic silhouette for work so I combined the bodice from the Colette Peony with Butterick 5466 skirt pattern, the same one that I used to make my lace skirt.

There were definitely some frustrating moments making this dress! I used a delicious yarn-dyed wool twill and it ended up having way more mechanical stretch than I had realized. I had to take in some ease through the side seams to make the bodice look right and because of that, I couldn't line it as I had planned. I had to take enough ease out of the bodice that I was worried that the non-stretch lining would have been way too tight or weirdly baggy inside the snug bodice. I also had to play around with the darts and raise where the skirt attached to the bodice and take in a lot at the zipper. I feel like I had to re-stitch every seam at least twice!

Thank God I bought such lovely fabric. It ended up being super comfortable even without the lining. Unfortunately, because I had planned to line it, the seam finishing is a little inconsistent  At least my facings and hems turned out looking good.

Pretty slick, right? This is my first time using lace trim for the hem finishing and I'm really happy how it turned out! I added a tutorial here on how to do an interfaced hem.


I'm really happy with how this dress turned out! This is the kind of dress that I always wanted but couldn't find an RTW one that fit. I really loved wearing this dress today!

Thanks to Kiren, Kyla and Reta for the photos. I had to take them at work to get daylight. Ugh, winter!

Here I am in front of the Kajama, a tall ship moored at Harbourfront Centre. Tomorrow is my second-last day at work! I think I'm going to wear this dress for my first day at my new job.

What's your advice for a first day of work outfit?