This was written by Cherie from you & mie for the Miss Matatabi Makers series.

∆ ∆ ∆

Hello! It’s Cherie here, back from a long MMM break. I’ve missed you guys! Hard to believe that it’s October already, but I’m here with quite the Halloween themed sewing project because it’s that time of year!

A little while back, I got a sneak peek at some awesome Halloween fabric (that are on sale right now!) that Frances had ordered for the shop. It’s such an unique print, but I wasn’t sure what it could be used for. Then when Frances gave us Makers our choices for fabric for the month, she listed the Halloween fabrics and challenged someone to make something with it. Well Frances, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I decided to go all out and make myself a party dress! Why? Who knows! I honestly am not sure why I decided to make a dress or if I’ll get many chances to wear it, but it seemed fun and I’ve been wanting to try out April Rhodes’ Riding Peplum/Party Dress pattern for a little while.

Photos from Miss Matatabi

The fabric is designed by Yoshiko Jinzenji for Yuwa and is covered in awesome Halloween images – cats, bats, pumpkins, witches and stars. It comes in 4 colorways – black on orange, mint, and white and white on white. I chose mint because I thought it was beautiful and not a typical Halloween color. The fabric is a quilting cotton, but it is lightweight and works well for garment sewing, except that it wrinkles like most quilting cottons.

The Riding Peplum/Party Dress is designed to be a suuuper quick and easy sew. I made this dress right after making the Alder Shirtdress and compared to that, this seemed like a breeze. Bodice front and back, skirt front and back, and that’s it! According to my measurements, I should have made size XL, but I wanted it to be more on the fitted side, so I made a muslin in size L to see if that would fit. It wasn’t too small, so I went with that. But after I had sewn together the dress, it still seemed way too baggy and not very flattering. I ended up taking both sides in by 1/2 an inch (which is a total of two inches off the bodice) and while I could wiggle into it without any closures, figured an invisible zip would be a wise thing to add. I’m curious how this bodice is supposed to fit – maybe more on the loose side, considering there are no closures. But with my body type, I felt like the extra fabric just didn’t do anything for me. I also added pockets, because . . . well, POCKETS!

The pattern requires quite a bit of fabric, especially if you’re making the dress and your fabric is not super wide. I love the fullness of the skirt, but if your fabric isn’t 54″ wide, then you need to cut the skirt as 4 separate pieces and you end up with a seam down the middle of the front and back. Luckily it’s not too noticeable, but you can still see it and if you have a printed fabric, it may be tricky to line up the prints on that seam. I ended up with a cat/bat hybrid on my butt seam! Haha. Frances had sent me plenty of fabric and I was able to play around a little with the placement of the images, especially that strip of rectangles that I love so much. It was fun planning that part of the dress.

Another thing to mention about this pattern is that the dress is SHORT! It’s got a high low hem and it’s meant to be short in the front, but if you’re not comfortable with a skirt a few inches above the knee, you may want to add some length. But the way the skirt moves is beautiful and I felt like a little girl in a circle skirt wanting to twirl all day! But then I’d show my unmentionables to everyone, so I mostly resisted 😛

∆ ∆ ∆

Thank you, Cherie! Connect with Cherie on her blog, instagram, facebook, and pinterest.