Exploring plus size sewing patterns
I was on the hunt for close-to-home silk noil fabric when a lovely instagrammer suggested taking a look at A + R Fabrics (who are based out of Australia). I’m always a sucker for a minimal white website, but since I’d recently purchased some black silk noil from Canada, I got in touch to see if there would be any new colours coming in soon (spoiler alerts: there is) and Trin offered to send some of her black silk noil my way in order to give it a test run.
Recently the lovely Michelle from Matchpoint Fabric celebrated a birthday by having a sale and it was all the excuse I needed to order myself some of her silk noil fabric that I hadn’t been able to find closer to home! Although I’m pretty sure that I played a large part in her silk noil being currently sold out, I really would recommend keeping an eye out for when there’s some back in stock
Stylearc’s Eme Dress is touted as the roundneck sister dress to their popular Adeline Dress (which I’ve made so many versions of)! Stylearc sent me a copy of the Eme multi-size printed pattern, but quite ironically I thought I’d sew a straight size 22 and I don’t think I’ll bother grading for my (inevitable) next version of this dress.
This Adeline Dress is made from lovely marsala linen from The Fabric Store.
Nice fabric is generally a little on the expensive side (you get what you pay for), but the Adeline can be made from 2 metres of fabric. That’s pretty rare in plus size sewing. So rare it probably explains why there are 4 of these in my closet (and counting)!
It was love at first sight with this scribble rayon fabric from The Fabric Store. I took it home not knowing that it would become an Adeline Dress.
Fortunately I had enough fabric remaining that I could also make a Peppermint Magazine Peplum!
These Ethel Designer Top from StyleArc (which I purchased as a set) isn’t something that I wear all that often.
I made the top well before I’d sewn any high-waisted pants, so it was a touch too short for me to enjoy wearing it with my jeans, and so it got pushed to the back of the cupboard for almost 2 years.
These Ethel Designer Pant from StyleArc (which I purchased as a set) sat in my ‘almost finished’ sewing box for over a year, after I deemed them not very successful.
After some unsuccessful purchases from them (back when they didn’t include finished garment measurements), I try to be quite savvy about picking patterns where it doesn’t matter that I need to grade at least a couple of sizes between my top and bottom.
This was my first StyleArcAdeline, in a lovely black linen with a not-quite-evenly-printed pineapple pattern in white.
I was inspired to make this after seeing some gorgeous versions from Meg, and Lara of Thornberry (I also love this amazing version made by Lara for her mum).
This was my 4th Adeline dress from StyleArc, and I’m still not sure that I’m done with this pattern.
This Lacey Dress from StyleArc is lovely, but hard to find online. As you can imagine, typing ‘lacey dress’ gets you an awful lot of lace dresses and the hashtags are all a mess too. If you’re reading this StyleArc, hire me and I’ll fix your hashtags!