Eve Dress x Sew Over It — M E G M A D E

While we never quite saw California as a permanent home, we really loved our two years there. And now that we're in the thick of dreary, grey, east coast winter my heart longs for beautiful Monterey days. I'd go back for a visit in a heartbeat!

As a final keepsake, a couple months before we moved we took family photos at Asilomar Beach and Fisherman's Wharf. We decided we wanted a couple locales that represented some of our favorite places and activities in Monterey, like the gorgeous rocky coastline and taking family walks along the bay to see the boats. The farther removed we become from our life there, the more I cherish these photographs and the memories they represent.

Naturally, there's something about pending photo shoots that cosmically make it feel like you don't have a thing to wear (or is it just me?), so I planned to make a pink Eve Dress by Sew Over It for our photo session.

The Eve Dress is a lovely woven wrap dress intended for fabrics with lots of drape, giving it a very soft and feminine feel. I had this idea to use a rayon challis with a lace embroidered border, using the border along the flounce sleeve and dipped hem (view A).

Here's the thing about using bordered fabrics. The border edge is straight. The skirt and flounce sleeve hems are curved. This makes for some tricky finagling to use the fabric the way you want to use it. for me, this meant changing the shape and length of the sleeve a little bit to accommodate the larger-than-I-expected border, and turning the hi-lo hem in to more of a quasi-handkerchief hem to fit the lace embroidery. While handkerchief hems aren't really my thing, I really wanted to make the bordered rayon work, so I just went with it!

I'm not sure this particular dress is my favorite make, but that's largely due to my creative choices with the lace border. I think the sleeves, which I lengthened to accommodate the lace, are too overwhelming for me, and I just don't love the skirt hem shape. I did find the bodice to be really large after I sewed up my measured size so I had to go back and take in a significant amount (and its still more billowy that I would like), but that and my fabric stubbornness aside, I really love the Eve Dress and can't wait to try another. For me, wrap dresses are one of those things that's so simple and patterns for it are abundant, yet its hard to find one that really embodies the look I'm wanting. The Eve Dress nails it.