What is the oldest piece of fabric in your stash? I recently sewed up a Guthrie & Ghani Sewing Society kit that I bought in the midst of lockdown in 2020! This kit has moved house with us, been considered many times and has been very patient waiting for its moment.

The kit

The kit was the Closet Core Patterns Sallie jumpsuit and dress, which came with everything I needed to make a garment, including machine needles. The forest green tencel modal jersey has an amazing drape and feels so soft. I think the fabric is still available to buy here – I can’t be sure it’s the same, but certainly looks similar.

Why so long?

I think one of reasons it took me so long to make this is that I originally wanted to make the jumpsuit, but the fitting of it was putting me off. When re-evaluating my wardrobe and stash, I thought “why not just make the dress and wear it now?”.

After this realisation, I got the pieces out and traced my size in the dress. I cut a few inches off the skirt pattern pieces before even cutting the fabric. As a “vertically challenged” sewist, I tend to do this with anything full length from the start by holding the piece up against myself and eye-balling it.

I chose to sew the v-neck t-shirt top as I prefer that style to spaghetti straps. The back has a nice tie to keep it from slipping off my shoulders.

Sewing the dress

As is often the case with fabrics that drape and feel amazing to wear, this was a bit of a pain to sew. It required all the pins and my hungry machine meant I had to start each seam a few inches from the end, then go back and finish.

It was worth persevering though and was quite a quick sew (if you ignore the 5 years it’s been in my stash). I put a label in the back even though the pockets should denote the front. When I’m grabbing something off a hanger in the morning, finding a label is much quicker than pockets to determine which was around a dress is.

The splits on both sides mean there’s no “penguin waddling”. If I had my time again, I would have overlocked all seams before sewing together as the inside edges would have been neater on the splits.

Thanks for reading about the most patient project :o)