Brown Deep Cowl Neck Dress

I recently finally got round to buying Drape Drape 2 by Hisako Sato - some of you more fervent readers may realise from previous posts, like the Little Black Dress and Gothic Goddess Dress, that I'm a bit of a fan of the Drape Drape series. I was instantly taken with the cowl neck dress (No.6 Three-Piece Deep Cowl Neck Dress) as it seemed like a really interesting approach to create what is probably one of my favourite necklines.

The fabric I had in mind was this brown/stone coloured jersey, of which I had 2m.

The only hitch was that the book said the pattern needed 2.2m. But I mean, when are the fabric requirements ever actually accurate? So I ignored this and got on with tracing the pattern. 2 hours later, I discover that one of the pieces actually is 2.2m long, and no angling it around on my fabric is going to change the fact that I just don't have enough. With more conventional patterns, this still probably wouldn't be a big deal; you could just shorten it or something. That doesn't work so well with these 'blob' patterns where everything's all over the place. So there was no way around it, this pattern just wasn't going to work.

The only problem was, I'd already got it into my head that I was going to make a cowl neck dress out of this fabric, and it would go so perfectly with the brown lace top I'd recently made.

Aforementioned lace top

So I was going to make this dress. The book be damned, I'm drafting the pattern myself.

Luckily, it's not too complex to do. There's probably loads of great tutorials on this, and my explanations aren't known for their clarity, so I'll skip over this for now - but if anyone would like to know how I came up with the pattern then let me know and I'd be happy to attempt a tutorial! Anyway, here's what the finished pattern looks like:

In terms of construction, it's incredibly simple - hem the neckline first, sew up the side seams, sew up the shoulders, hem the arm holes and the bottom, done. Once the pattern was done, it only took a couple of hours to whip up.

And there we have it! Now it's time for some sexy mannequin action...

And here's some of me modelling it:

Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It is incredibly low-cut, so it will take some careful wardrobe planning if I ever want to wear it out on its own, but I also do think it complements the lace top really well. So I've succeeded in making something I actually like, but whether I've managed to make something I'll actually wear remains to be seen...