Deer and Doe Centauree

If you haven’t seen the Deer & Doe Centauree Dress yet, check out these style lines!

It’s s pretty simple summer dress, and very easy to construct, but it has interesting front seaming. As soon as I saw this design, I thought, “this would be a very cool dress for playing with stripes!” Instead I very subtly played with the direction of a floral print. Centauree is French for thistle. I couldn’t help myself!

You can't even tell. Here’s a close-up.

Now can you tell? Trust me, it’s there. I could have placed the print better. I also meant to add piping, but I was too excited about all the French seaming and I forgot. But look how nice the interior is!

The main fabric is Liberty of London Rochester B and the contrast is a Birch organic cotton in Grass. I used it to make bias tape, using this brilliant pin method from Colette, which became the straps of the dress. And I also used it to finish the waistband. The interior of this dress is very neat, and I’m pretty proud!

Here is a view of the back:

The outermost straps are from my matching bra! But I need to finish talking about this dress first.

The seams replace traditional darts, and I think they shape the bodice very nicely.

I took it out for a spin this morning, at the Cleveland Flea! This is the first weekend I’ve been able to go, and it was very cool. I bought a coffee mug with herb illustrations on it and a blueberry-basil ice pop from Chill Pop. That’s the best one, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately I was too early for the beer  :( But they had a ton of cool jars and crates and a cauldron. And lots of food trucks!

One more thing I wanted to mention about this dress! I wasn’t satisfied with the instructions for the V of the bias tape neckline. The instructions have you sew two pieces of bias tape together like this:

The machine had a lot of trouble, and that’s why it looks so chewed up. I tried it that way a few times. Also, the point of the tape that becomes the bottom of the V will have a sort of raw edge. It just doesn’t look very neat, and this dress is all about neat.

I picked this up from the last dress I did. Open up the bias tape, and sew it together that way!

Then trim it and fold it back together, and it looks much nicer!

Okay, and here’s the matching bra!

I used our green picot elastic and some green jersey that I had. I used the bias tape I made for the straps and the underwire channeling, although I did not insert any underwire. I figured all that fabric would be supportive enough.

The hooks and sliders are all from a lime green bra I had. Many sewists, when a garment has given its all, remove all the useable buttons, zippers, and other tidbits for reuse, and that’s what I do with my bras.

I plan on making a post on what I do with fabric scraps. Quilting can be an excellent way to use them, but I am unfortunately not a quilter (yet?). I had some pretty significant leftovers from this dress, so, naturally, I made a bra.