Here’s our second new model, Shona, wearing a very cleverly-designed dress with a ring yoke and side-panels feature.
Shona makes her catwalk debut!
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This is by Caroline Otto whose Doll Duds patterns are made available via Liberty Jane. It relies for its appeal on a good contrast between the yoke material and the body of the dress. Shona’s clothing season is Winter, so I picked a dark mauve for the yoke with an overall flower design on off-white for the main body of the dress. These worked beautifully together and the yoke, side-panels and cuffs stand out well against the multiplicity of flowers on the contrast fabric. As a finishing touch, a watering-can button with embroidered water droplets pours a refreshing drink onto the garden of flowers below. Even Shona’s shoes – from Gotz – have flowers on them!
A refreshing drink for the flowers!
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The main challenge of this little dress was the need to be absolutely exacting about matching up the side-panel seams. The impact of the dress would be very much reduced if the points of the side-panels didn’t line up properly, and it would be very easy to get this wrong. So every seam has to be stitched accurately, so that all the pattern pieces stay in balance and the side seams are exactly the same length. Quite a finicky business, but I’m glad to say that the points on the side-panels did line up very well for me.
While a Kit’s Couture creation is under construction, I try it for size on my model regularly to check everything is going to plan. It was clear from very early on that Shona was going to look lovely in her new dress. But as it neared completion, I wanted to add a little something extra to give it individuality – perhaps a distinctive button on the yoke? I found a light mauve watering-can button in my button tin, and this seemed perfect: all those flowers would need watering, after all. A few running stitches did duty as the water droplets streaming from the watering-can’s rose, and I knew the dress really was complete. Shona looks stunningly pretty in it – the strong cool colours suit her dark colouring admirably, as does the ice-pink ribbon in her hair.
