Claire Cami Dress

My partner for the Craft Book Swap that I recently participated in admired my sewing projects and requested a dress or a skirt as the crafted part of of the swap. I was glad to make her a dress. I was a bit worried about making a garment for someone I had never met who couldn't come for fittings. I felt a bit more confident when I found we had similar measurements. I have a thicker waist and am shorter but I thought I could work with that. I decided on the Claire Cami Dress from Serindipity Studios. I had just purchased this pattern a few weeks before and hadn't sewed it up yet. But I liked the simple pullover styling and it has a high waist with a drawstring. Mainly the drawstring waist is what sold me on this dress, because she could adjust it to her liking.

I looked through her Wist and she had a lot of dresses on there so I got a good sense of her style. I wanted to use what I had on hand. I had this black linen rayon blend enough to make a dress and Trees liked black. I had some small scraps of this yellow, grey and black floral linen left over from a dress I made myself last year. Now I needed one more coordinating fabric to bring it all together. So I used this black and grey dotted fabric from the Authentic collection from Moda.

The pattern was easy to follow and has several design options for you to mix and match. Sometimes pullover dresses without buttons or zippers are a loose fit because you need to be able to pull it on and off easily. All the pictures on Trees Wist showed very fitted styles. This dress fit very well with no gaposis under the arms. And you can adjust the waist drawstring to put the gathers where you need them. I loved the way it fit me. I plan to make more for myself.

I wanted one last thing to tie it all together. As I was looking at the yellow floral scraps I noticed that one of the salvage edges had the print going all the way to the edge and the edge was fringe. Perfect for making a flower broach to pin to the shoulder. That completed the look and I loved it. I really wanted to keep it for myself but it was destined for China. Trees likes the dress too but she hasn't had time to post pictures wearing it. I will share her pictures as soon as she does. In the meantime this is me trying on her dress.