V Neck Batik Dress

Hello, I'm enjoying slow sewing lately and happy that I managed to finish my latest batik dress after weeks working on it. This dress is my entry to #magamsewalong "Multicultural May" challenge in Instagram and I chose batik that is a typical fabric from my home country Indonesia. Luckily that I don't need to fly to Indonesia to buy this fabric, I found it locally from a friend that supplies batik.

I was searching a lot for inspiration in Pinterest and found a very cute yellow polka dots blouse from J.Crew to copy the yoke and sleeves ruffles. And then, I adjusted to the dress that I want to make. My plan and inspiration posted here if you are interested to take a look.

My pattern was self-drafted, I followed the instruction from the book "Basic Pattern Making" by Lucia Mors de Castro and I posted the first dress here.
Based on my concept, I modified the basic dress pattern by making the v-neckline, stand collar, moved the shoulder line to create the yoke and cut four pieces of fabric for the ruffles.
The v-neck was finished with facing and I decided to add two more darts on the back side.
As the fabric was transparent, I sewed a full body lining. I used the only one cotton lining fabric from my stash, as I didn't go out to the fabric shop during this pandemic. The colour doesn't match my batik but I'm okay with that.

The sewing process was slow and involved a lot of basting and hand sewing. I did rolled hemmed stitch in the ruffles pieces and gathered before attached to the yokes and sleeves.
I attached and sewed the facing on the v-neck, clipped the curve area and turned to the wrong side of the fabric. And then pinned, basted and hand-sewed the high collar in the neckline.

I sewed the lining both with my sewing machine and hand sewing. I sewed the darts, shoulder and sides with sewing machine and the center back seams and zipper with my hand.
Also, the armhole was sewed by hand as well. You can see here the video in my Instagram.
And the rest of the process was the same as the usual manner.

My final words, I love this dress especially the neckline and the little ruffles. And I'd love to make another in different print that is easy to wear everyday without feeling too much dressing up. 

That's it for today, if you are interested to see other sewists who's participating #magamsewalong, feel free to check them in Instagram with hashtag magamsewalong.

Also, my special thank to Sue, Helene and Suzy for hosting this fun and friendly challenge.

Stay safe and happy sewing 💗