Maxi 'Bump' Dress

Finally, an adult garment!

Nellie wanted a Maxi dress that she could wear while pregnant with her "bump", and also afterwards. With only 3 weeks to go until her due date, finding a suitable pattern was a challenge! I thought that a pattern for a knit dress would be best as her shape will be changing a lot over the next 2-3 months and a cotton dress would be too restrictive on terms of sizing.

We went on a search around Hamilton for the perfect pattern. There was only ONE Maxi dress pattern for a knit fabric in all of the pattern books, regardless of brand! Of course, the pattern was sold out in all of Hamilton, and as it turned out, all of the Auckland too! As luck would have it, Nellie was travelling to Rotorua for work a few days later and stopped into the Fabric Barn...they had the pattern!

We used $5 per metre fabric from Spotlight (purchased before we had the pattern) and my estimation skills were quite a way off so we got 5 metres. In the end the dress only needed 2.5!

It was a very simple style and "should" have been reasonably straight forward, what I didn't count on was how difficult this fabric was to work with. It was extremely slippery and time consuming to work with! I learnt a good lesson in following patterns too. I tried to follow their directions and was VERY confused. In the end I decided to unpick a lot of it and sew it intuitively, I didn't have any problems after that. It may not be assembled in the same way as the pattern but the dress still looks the same from the outside. I also had my first lesson in adjusting a pattern to fit. This wasn't a maternity pattern so I had to play around with the sizing a little.

Overall, I guess I am pleased with it and Nellie looks GORGEOUS in it. She has bought more fabric for the next one!