A big hello to you all and I missed you so much. I was one week in Frankfurt and as we came back we had a funny water problem in the bathroom. So funny that I am only now back to writing for #needleworkmonday.

The water of shower and basin did not stop to run. We firstly repaired the mountings, but this did not help as the main valve is simply to old. After this was fixed the shower head broke and we saw we had again a water damage at the ceiling from the apartment above… a never-ending story (finally our landlord promised to renovate the bathroom within the next 6 month – we will see).

But back to something much lovelier: dresses, dinosaurs and old skeletons 😀

Wait, you will say, why isn’t she writing about sewing? Because I must make a detour over Frankfurt before I tell you about the beautiful Ida dress from Rosa P.

 

 

But naturally you can simply skip my story and jump to the heading ‘Ida Dress’

 

Our plan for Frankfurt was to visit every available museum and botanical garden. Top on the list were the MMK and the Schirn . Both are exhibitions for contemporary art and both – tada!!! – were closed. Maybe we should have researched beforehand. Ok, on to the Chinese garden – you can imagine what happened – closed because of arson. Next step the famous Senkenberg Museum and this (hold your breath) was open :-DDD

 

Surrounded by dinosaur skeletons (super big), ancient seahorses (super small) and moose (super fluffy) we rediscovered the diverse flora and fauna of prehistoric times. As the air was very bad in the museum we decided to walk home – now you know how I got my 18.000 steps per day – and this led us through the centre of Frankfurt. And there I saw this cute dress from Zara which I instantly wanted to make. My theory is, that the dinosaurs subconsciously tele commanded me to this dress 😀

 

 

 

 

Back home I remembered one of my oldest fabric purchases: a dark woven fabric with a subtle burgundy stripe. This fabric was destined to be my dress-test-fabric and the dress I wanted to test is the Ida dress from Rosa P. because it was so like the one from Zara. And more over her patterns have a reputation to be very precise and easy to make (the reputation is true – loved it).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ida Dress

I have chosen the size 42 with some trepidation, as I am much curvier on the backside than Rosa herself who models the dresses in her book (and looks amazing in them). I traced the pattern, cut it out from the fabric and followed her directions to the word. Step one was finishing the fabric, then I closed the shoulder seams. The first mistake I made – and I write it down to remember it for the next Ida dress I absolutely will make – I forgot to add the seam allowance to the facing: ugh! I had to rip the facing out and start anew. Ok, learned for the next time. Sewing in the facing to the neckline was a bit trickier for me, but I got it done. Last step for the upper part was closing the side seams. Everything done I tried the bodice on and it was very generous. On to the skirt part. Here I deviated from her directions. Instead of starting with the pockets, I sewed the skirt to the bodice, as I wanted to know if the dress will fit. And it fit so-so…. I had guessed right; my backside was interfering with the drape. I had big wrinkles above my bum (wahhhhhhhhhhh). As the dress is worked without a zipper, inserting darts were no option, as they would have made the dress too narrow to put in on. So, I shortened the bodice about 5 cm hoping it would help and it did (jippppyyyy).

 

 

After fitting the dress, I tackled the next big unknown for me: the pockets. And surprisingly it went well. The pockets are big rectangles, which are seamed, folded and then sewn on at the sides.

Now my dress is finished, and I love it so much. The length is to my liking, it is wide and comfortable, I had fun to make it and I also learned to sew simple pockets. A big thank you to Rosa P. for her wonderful pattern book.

 

 

And look, the little dinosaur we adopted at the Senkenberg Museum also approves 😀

And If you ask who is the blue fellow? He is my beloved headache-eater which I got as a gift from my husband <3

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on steemit. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. If you want to read all comments on this post, you can visit my steemit blog.