By Hand London Anna Dress - the finished article

Well. It's been a while.

I have been busy and lazy. And putting off taking photos of the most beautiful thing I've made myself so far.

I had a crack at the By Hand London Anna dress back in August and used some fabulous Amy Butler Alchemy fairy tale voile in vanilla. I had two metres from my birthday trip to raystitch in June and bought two more when it was on sale at the small but charming elliemagpie. None left at either establishment now of course (raystitch does still have a weirder pistachio version).

I made it with the intention of wearing it to a late summer wedding in Anglesea. Nearly froze to death. Wedding was in a tipi.
At one point I was wearing fleecy owl print purple pj's underneath, a huge woolly cardigan on top and a considerable wine jacket. Still it was real pretty. I got cornered in the loos by a stranger who complimented me on the dress, then tipsily asked for my number as it "would be great to have someone make me stuff for free"... Charming mais non.

The wedding was beautiful but I took next to no sensible pictures. It was too cold to pose. I only had the strength to drink wine and gin. Thus there is only one grainy phone picture of me without the cardigan on, note that it is actually poised around my wrists to be pulled back on afterwards. The pj's aren't visible, but trust that they're there, it had also rained all over my hair.

I have just noticed a girl in the background with bare arms. Perhaps she had already lost all feeling in them?

 



This dress shouldn't be a lot of work as it's rated beginner, but it is, the cutting lasted forever. There are an awful lot of skirt pieces. I tried to make sure they didn't match, I didn't have enough fabric to ensure they matched and I thought it would look like I just got it wrong if they were almost there.

I made a full toile before cutting into my precious fabric and here are my alterations

• I needed to take the back in at the zip by an inch either side. 
• I also did a sway back adjustment by just pinching out the spare fabric which seemed to work just fine.
• I also cut four inches off the bottom of the pattern because I am not a giant. 

It's all finished with some pretty french seams although in the interests of speed I machine hemmed. You can't tell and I was too busy swishing the skirt and 'Angelina-ing' my leg outta that slit that I simply did not care. See, look how happy it makes me.  And indeed how twirly the skirt is.

It is of course now full on winter up North. My fingers are getting chilly typing and my feet are firmly ensconced in thermal slippers. So it's going away in the wardrobe till next year. Sob*