Hand-Embroidered Anna Dress

Oh gollies. This one is good. I've been embroidering away, bit by bit, over the last several months, and the moment I put in the last satin stitch, I boogied my booty to the sewing machine. I  am so glad that I was able to snap photos quickly to show you this one hot off the presses! This is the By Hand London Anna Dress, with the addition of a circle skirt and oodles of hand-embroidered leaves.

Now, let me back up and tell you the story of how this dress came to be. Upon concluding Me-Made-May this year, I realized I was itching to do another embroidery project on a dress like my cross stitch one. About that time, I happened upon this beautiful dress from Dethrose Vintage. I had also just started working on my first Anna dress, and zing!  I realized I could do a version of this lovely dress, but in my size, with the Anna v-neck. 

Falling Fern Dress on Dethrose Vintage

The original appears to be painted, but my medium of choice is always needle and thread, so I stocked up on black embroidery floss and put on some Netflix. I cut out my dress pattern pieces then free-hand drew the branches. Then I created a leaf pattern piece to trace around for the leaves. I backed each section in interfacing, and then used three strands of floss with the satin stitch for the actual embroidery. 

Once I finished the embroidery, I checked each piece against my pattern to see if it stretched out and I needed to adjust. Of course it had, and I was able to sort out most of it except for a wee bit of gaping on the neckline I couldn't control without throwing things wonky. Next time, I'll definitely do the embroidery on the fabric raw before cutting. 

I constructed the dress, per the instructions, and added a full lining in cotton voile to hide the big blocks of interfacing on the inside. My outer fabric is cotton linen chambray (so many good words all strung together!) by Robert Kaufman. Even with the addition of the lining, the linen and voile are so light and airy that this dress feels nice and cool. 

It turned out smashingly! My next big adventure is the Susan Khalje Couture Sewing School, a week-long workshop where you bring your own special project. I've got some beautiful cotton organdy and a Grace Kelly-inspired cocktail dress that I've been saving up for the occasion. I can't wait, but boy oh boy, that's going to be an undertaking!