A gathered dress: by Cotton Friend

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged much the last couple years. I have been sewing though, on and off. Now, in the 10th month of 2016, I finally got my sew-jo and blog-jo back! And it's all thanks to this dress.

My friend just came back from Taiwan and brought me two new Cotton Friend magazines. It's a Chinese sewing magazine that has been translated from the original Japanese version. There are lots of fabulous bags, aprons, and casual clothing patterns. The clothing is of a very Japanese style - simple, loose, baggy.

Cotton Friend sewing magazine

As gratitude, I let her choose a dress to make for her. And she did:

model 1 from the magazine

Model 2 from the magazine

The fabric
The fabric is printed Japanese lawn. My friend chose this pattern. It's $12 (Australian) per metre. I'm sure it'd be much cheaper in Japan (oh yeah, forgot to mentioned I went to Japan twice last two years. Maybe I'll blog about the fabric shopping there). The lawn is soft and smooth, perfect for this dress. It needs 2.6 metres of fabric.

The dress
The dress has a gathered neckline, waistline and puffy sleeves. It only has three pattern pieces. The only not-so-easy part of the dress is making the casing for the elastic band, but it's good practice for me and I think I will be faster with elastic next time.

I made size M. No adjustment is needed. The dress fits her perfectly.

The pattern is very easy. 

I made this dress with her. It took me five hours in total from tracing the pattern to finish. It's a long time for a simple project like this but it's because I hadn't sewn a dress in a long time.

I like the gathered raglan sleeves. 

Both she and I are happy with the result. It looks exactly the same as the one in the magazine. I particularly like the puffy sleeves matching the puffiness in the bodice.

Looks just like the one on the magazine.