At the risk of bragging, one of the things I’m best at is riding coattails.

One of my favourite sewing bloggers is Roisin, aka Dolly Clackett. She's getting married in a month, and to celebrate both her wedding and her inimitable sense of style we have the Sew Dolly Clackett sewalong, hosted by Rhinestones and Telephones. The goal: make a dress inspired by Roisin.

Did I say inimitable? Absolutely. Won't stop us from trying though; a chance to steal from Roisin without seeming like a creepy stalker? Sign me right up. I knew immediately which pattern I would be using: the Anna from By Hand London, for those of you who've wandered in off the non-sewing street. Roisin has made something like eight versions which bumped this pattern to the top of the buy-this-as-soon-as-my-2013-pattern-moratorium-is-lifted list. Which I did. I don't think I even waited until January 1st.

Months of talking a game and planning plans have come to fruition. Let's see if I have my Clackettisms in order.
Blog title that is a reasonably obscure quote from popular culture? Check.
Ferocious footwear? Check.
Door and iron railings? Check.
Frocks with fancy names?

CHECK!

Allow me to introduce the Death is Now My Neighbour dress, the Down in the Distant Electric Avenue dress, the unfinished Let's Go Ride a Bike dress, and the That Million Dolly Look dress. Four Three and seventh-eighth dresses, my friends. Not quite up to Roisin's output^*, but still. Get comfortable; this could take a while.

General remarks about Anna: it's a lovely, lovely dress. I cut a 2/6 on the bodice, grading to a 6/10 at the waist and hips and thanks to my dowager's hump scholar's stoop, I don't seem to have as much of a back gap issue as others did. I did my usual 1 inch bodice lengthening on all except the first -- tissue fit said I could get away with it; tissue fit was wrong. I wound up sewing 3/8" seam at the shoulders and waist on the Death dress to get some extra length. For the others, I lengthened above the pleats because both my waist and busticles are low (although I took the pleats up to the 2/6 mark). No muslin, as usual, but you'll be happy to read that at least I fit-basted before sewing the final seams on the Death dress. Check me out: I'm growing here.


First up: the Death is Now My Neighbour dress is a straight midi Anna with v-neck. I had enough fabric to make a maxi, but the underlining makes it a little too stiff, and I think a polka-dotted maxi would be too much of a good thing. I got 4 yards of this gorgeous cotton-silk from Gertie's store last spring and was originally planning on making the vintage Advance 6118, but was scared off by having to grade the pattern down and muslin, and then Anna came into my life. I worked on it during breaks in marking before the April reports were due, alternating between Inspector Morse and Lewis episodes.

Wait a second, that door is the wrong colour.

There. Fixed it.

Underlined (as per Gertie's suggestion) in white cotton siri and French seamed everywhere but the waist. I meant to hand stitch the sleeve hems but forgot. That meant I could get away with turning up the bottom hem twice and machine stitching, so yay. I have to take the inner shoulder seams in just a bit because the front gapes a little.

Lapped zipper, because Roisin likes them and so do I. Hand-picked lapped zipper, no less. Using an orange zip might have been a mistake; one of these days I'm going to get the stitches on the underside close enough to the zipper that the zipper is actually hidden. Also, why do pattern instructions have you attach the facings before installing the zipper when there is a much cleaner way to sew in the zip and facing combo? And why do I never read the tutorials for those things before I do any sewing? And why aren't there any tutorials for how to neatly attach facings if it's too late for you to use the other method? Ahem. Anyway. I forgot to finish the zipper seams, so I bound the edges with left-over selvedges, an idea stolen from Sally-Oh.


I'm quite pleased with this dress, and I anticipate wearing it often when and if the weather gets warmer.

Now, it wouldn't be a true Dolly Clackett dress if there was just one Anna, right? And the lady has made a good many in a particular print. So I give you...

...the Down in the Distant Electric Avenue^** dress.

Dolly Clackett loves red with white polka dots. Conveniently, so do I. Inconveniently, she seems to have bought up all the available print, for when I went on a hunt through the Queen West stores in February, I found only three bolts. One was spandex, one was a ridiculously expensive cotton, and this one. This one? Is silk. Mmmmm, silk. I wasn't going to buy it, but the nice lady made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I pretreated it with gelatin as per The Sewing Space and it was a breeze to work with. Mostly. Except for the bits where I mucked up and had to unpick unpick unpick while trying not to tear great holes in the fabric.

Here we have Anna's boat neckline. I originally thought of adding a simple gathered skirt à la Clackett, but after I made the Death dress I wanted to see what the skirt was like in a drapier fabric, so this is a straight-up copy of one of Roisin's Annas. Miles and miles of French seams throughout; I swear I love French seams, but this was getting ridiculous. I interfaced the zipper with silk organza, which I think was a mistake because it's really heavy and the edges stick out a bit. However, I used Lladybird's invisible zipper & facing tutorial and I'm rather pleased with the way it turned out.

The hem is rolled, because I love my rolled hem foot and the By Hand London ladies gave me the go-ahead. And of course, despite my love and adoration of that foot, I can't seem to use it properly for more than a stretch and wound up having to hand-sew sections of the hem anyway.

Because that dress took so long to finish, I didn't get this next dress done by the deadline. It was a bonus dress, anyway, so I'm not terribly upset. One of our lady's specialties is mixing the bodice of one pattern with the skirt of another, so next up is the Let's Go Ride a Bike dress. Beige isn't exactly Dolly Clackett's style, but while searching for the red with white polka dots, I found the fabric that I originally wanted to use for Butterick 6582, inspired by this LGRAB post. Also? More polka dots.


I'm not particularly enamoured of the Butterick bodice in cotton, so I went with Anna's V-neck. I was inspired by this post to add the full skirt from Butterick 6582. And pockets. I have recently realized that the lab benches at school are the perfect place to cut fabric; they've certainly cut down my cutting time by about a fifth. I cut the main pieces out in about half an hour and I thought this would be the quickest sew ever. Oh, me, you so silly. Because then I noticed how incredibly sheer the fabric was. Back to the store Saturday for cotton voile and more underlining. And I had to cut the rest of the fabric Wednesday afternoon, since I had a four day weekend and forgot to bring the fabric to school on Tuesday. This was very much a GBSB-type speed challenge. I failed miserably.

I did another lapped zipper, this time leaving the facings until last so I could finish the zipper properly. I mucked it up about a billion times. So as of the deadline, I still have the facings to attach and the bottom to hem. Not too bad, really.

ETA: Finishing the facings on that zipper proved to be an exercise in unpicking seam after seam because I kept sewing them in the wrong order or wrong sides together. There's a bit Irish folklore that says when you get to the pearly gates, St. Peter will hold you upside down in a barrel filled with all the unfinished booze you've wasted. I wonder if there is a thread gollum along the same lines waiting for me. But I think I've figured out how to sew that lapped seam close enough to the zipper the first time round. Maybe next time I'll remember to lengthen the topstitch.

I bought 3 yards of both polka dots because I barely managed to squeeze the Buttericks out of 2.5 yards, but I wound up with about a yard left over of each and I have no idea what to do with them. Suggestions welcome.

I didn't intend to go overboard with the polka dot dresses, by the way. While they are certainly a Roisin standby, the ultimate Dolly Clackett dress is a mashup of two patterns in a truly quirky print, so for the piece de resistance, we have the That Million Dolly Look Macaranna.^*** Anna bodice, Colette Macaron skirt.^****

Oh, and while the doors were good, it would be better if I were in Leamington Spa. Sadly, for this picture I could only manage Leamington Ave.


This was the dress I had been planning since they announced the contest. I was looking for Eiffel Tower prints when by chance I came across this Alexander Henry quilting cotton. It's what Roisin uses for her blog header and naturally she has already made a dress from it. I had to have it, shipping charges be damned. I frankenpatterned the Anna bodice with the Macaron skirt, remembering this time to lengthen the skirt by five centimetres. Alas, the skirt is still too short because you can see my knees. By dint of cutting the facings on the cross grain, I used 2 yards pretty much exactly, with maybe enough left over to make a wristlet. There were some... issues with fitting the bodice to the skirt, but this post is already ridiculously long^***** so I'll talk about how I made it work in another post.

This was actually my second Dolly Clackett dress, and the first ever inserting a proper invisible zipper with my brand new foot. It only took me two tries to get the waistline to line up and three tries to get the top part right, but I am so very impressed with myself.

The DC thinks it needs a blue or red belt, and I agree. And looking at these pictures, I can see that I need to bring the pleats up a little bit because I think I marked the wrong dots -- turns out that my busticles are low, but not that low. So, despite the fact that this dress is technically finished for a change... it's not quite done yet. Story. of. my. life.


Oh, and did you notice the shoes? I should note that while I have a host of fabulous shoes, my collection pales in comparison with Roisin's -- I really want to see her Tardis closet -- so I had to improvise. Shoe clips! I'll post how I made these separately.

So that's the craic. This has been a seriously fun sewalong. I think I may have at least one more Anna in me; after all, I still don't have a maxi Anna. The DC gave me a few yards of white linen, and while I really do not need another white outfit for Dîner en Blanc, I'm thinking separates might be in order. I love the idea of the Anna bodice as a blouse. I could do the Anna maxi skirt, but I'm seriously in love with the new Sewaholic Gabriola, so now I'm flummoxed. WWDCD?



By the way, a huge thank you to the DC who shakes his head when my plans go overboard but then follows me to the wilds of Etobicoke to take pictures.

^*Forget Dolly Clackett standards; this falls short even by #sewDollyClackett standards. There are people in the pool with 5-10 dresses! Now that's what I call dedication.

^**Cue earworm.

^***Maybe the name needs a little work. Cue another earworm.

^****To be a true Dolly Clackett, the skirt should be either a By Hand London Elisalex or Charlotte, but I have neither of those patterns. I've made several Macarons, so it qualifies in spirit.

^*****Even by my standards.