Papercut Patterns Sigma Dress

Making dresses in one of my favourite things at the moment. I'm not sure why, but I think I find them the most rewarding because once you've made a dress, you have a whole outfit ready to go! 

I absolutely adored this fabric when I first saw it on the Blackbird Fabrics website and knew that I wanted to use it on a dress so that I could show off as much of the pattern as possible. I had bought the Sigma dress by Papercut Patterns a while before and had been toying for quite a long time about which fabric to use to make it. 

Papercut Sigma dress 

The instructions for making this dress were nice and clear, although I was a little confused about the interfacing for the pockets. I like the fact that there are two skirt options, and two sleeve options. This makes it very versatile depending on what kind of dress you want. I went for the gathered front skirt (variation one) with short sleeves. I thought that the gathered version would work best with this print. 

These flowers!

I made a muslin of the dress top to check the fit in large. As a result, the top is now a medium at the arms graded to an extra large at the waist. This was to accommodate the fact that my waist is larger than my shoulders, proportionally speaking. This seemed to work pretty well, although when I make this dress again, I will maybe go from medium to large at the waist as this one does feel roomy. Perhaps I should have made that second muslin after all?! I think I may also take the shoulders in by half an inch and adjust the sleeves accordingly. 

One thing that is different with this pattern when compared to most other dress patterns like this (that I have seen) is that the sleeves are sewn in flat before you sew the side seams together, and you don't gather the sleeve heads. I was dubious about whether this would work, but it really did and now I am going to trust whatever Papercut Patterns say in future. 

I originally added six inches to the length of the skirt after reading some reviews which said that the skirt came out very short. I took off around two before I hemmed and I'm pretty happy with this length now. 

I love the pockets; they are a great shape (not too big) and I like the fact that they are attached to the waist seam so that they don't flop around. 

In summary, this dress is really comfortable, in fit and because the fabric is so lush!