Sew-along Fibre Mood Mira in Royal Blue

After a lovely, very rare clothes shopping trip, and a little poke around in one of my favourite high street shops. I was inspired to re-create one of the many dresses I saw.

There are so many beautiful strong vibrant colours and floaty shapes this summer, I was so incredibly inspired! sometimes its nice to take a break and have a refresh!

Pattern: Fibre Mood Mira

Over the last few years I have sewn this pattern quite often but this time, I’m going to combine two different fabrics, a knit and a woven.

The Fibre Mood Mira can easily be downloaded from their website, its a 3/4 length tiered dress and can be sewn from a variety of different fabrics, this pattern has no rules!

Fabric Choice

The shops are full of super vibrant colours, Emerald Greens, Fuchsia Pink’s, Lavender Purples, But I have chosen Royal Blue for my latest make.
Ive also noticed lots of colour blocking, matching the same tones of colours and creating an outfit. So I have decided to use a mix of woven Cotton stretch and Cotton Jersey.

The blue tones are not exact, but very similar. This is not easy, as a dye can be absorbed very differently depending on the properties of the fabric.

Fabric choice and pattern

Pattern alterations

Using the woven fabric for the bodice of the dress and the Jersey for the tired skirt. I also cut out 2 extra strips to create a tie finish at the back of the dress, rather than using a hook and eye, and added roughly 15cm to the depth of all the skirt panels. ( I like this style to sit a little longer, over the knee)

Whats needed

As well as Fabric, you will need a jersey and a woven sewing machine needle, a twin needle for the Hem, a turner, matching thread and I used my walking sewing machine foot for the jersey.

beautiful Royal Blue fabric

Let’s get sewing!

Firstly cut all the pattern pieces out and overlocked the back centre edges with an overlock machine or using a Zig Zag.

Place the right sides of the fabric together and sew up to the bottom of the curve ( the notch ) open and press the seams.

Centre back seam

Neck Ties

To create the neck ties, place the ties right sides together, sew along the long edge and turn them with a loop turner. Press them flat, poke the ends neatly back in on themselves and top stitch along one side.

Finished neck ties

I used a pair of scissors to poke the ends in!

The Bodice

Next Pin and sew the shoulder seams together and finish off the edge with an overlock or a zig zag stitch.
Press the bias tape for the neck in half lengthways with the right sides of the fabric facing outwards, and fold the facing off the back of the neck, back on its-self. Pin and sew both raw edges of the bias tape to the neck line.

Now fold the tape and the seam allowance out of the way and sew the tape into place around 2mm from the seam edge through all layers of fabric.

and fold, the facings back out to the correct side, concealing the ends of the neck-tape

Fold the Bias tape all the way over to the wrong side, press flat and sew it into place right next to the edge. Not forgetting to pin and secure the ends of the back neck ties, as shown in the photo below.

Sleeves

The patterns sleeve is 3/4 length, which I have reduced to be the same length as the bodice. Pin your sleeve head, making sure to match the single and double markings on the bodice and the sleeve. The single mark indicates the front of the sleeve and the double markings are the back.

Sew the sleeve head to the bodice and overlock the seam.

Underarm and side seams

lay the bodice right sides facing, pin and stitch from the sleeve cuff under the arm and through to the bodice hem, and neaten off the edges with an over lock or a zig zag stitch.

Sleeve Cuff

The final stage on the bodice is to neaten off the edge of the sleeve cuff, press by 2cm to the wrong side and top stitch.

The Skirt

Now Im going to move onto the Jersey part of my dress.

Laying right sides together sew the side seams of both the jersey skirt tiers.
Using a long stitch length and a low thread tension, sew 2 parallel stitches along the top edge of the smaller of the skirt tiers.

Carefully tug the 2 upper threads to gather the fabric into ruffels.

Now evenly gather and pin the gathered edge to the hem of the bodice, right sides facing. Firstly match and pin the front and back centre, next the side seams, then evenly distribute the rest of the gathers in-between ( you will need to use lots of pins to hold the gathers in place)

Sew the ruffled edge to the bodice hem with a 1cm seam allowance, then remove all the gathering threads and neaten with the overlock.

I used my Bernina Walking foot to help feed the jersey and gathers, this is not a necessity, but it certainly helped.

pinned gathers

Walking foot

Repeat this for the larger, bottom part of the skirt tiers, attaching the top of the second tier ( the lower skirt pattern pieces ) to the bottom of the first tier.

Finish by overlocking or zig zagging the raw edges.

View from the inside of the dress, the 2 tiers attached and edges overlocked

Hemming

To create a professional finish to the garment, I used a twin needle for the hem.

Firstly press and pin the hem of the lower tier by 3cm, and sew from the right side of the fabric, using a twin needle in your sewing machine on a stitch length of around 3,4mm.

Twin needle

Finished…

A final press and a fitting session and your done.. I bright, fun floaty summer dress.

As a little extra touch I added a small Leo Label at the waist line. I simply inserted it when attaching the first tier to the bodice. It adds a little interest.