spring sewing: a lemon dress

I did not get this dress finished in time for our holiday, but I did get it done before the time came to make a new seasonal plan, so that's something. Honestly it wasn't summery enough for this dress when we were away anyway. 

This is a Cashmerette Upton/Sew Over It tulip skirt, as I originally planned. I bought two metres of the fabric (which is a stretch cotton sateen) and ended up with more left over than I expected. Do I pretend I'm going to make a skirt out of it even though I absolutely would not wear a lemon skirt? Do I continue with the pleasant fiction that I'm definitely going to take up bag-making at some point? Who can say. 

I didn't run into any issues during construction and the dress came out looking more or less the way I expected. I like the way it looks on me but I'm not certain yet if it's right for me, or if I'll wear it. I thought my biggest hurdle would be the novelty print, but it's not (though I'm not a hundred per cent sold on it, honestly); it's the cotton sateen itself. I'm so unused to wearing fabric like this and it's weird. I wear cotton so rarely anyway, and I was mistaken in my belief that this fabric was similar to the fabric I used the first time I used this combination of patterns. That fabric is cotton, and it's not as light as lawn, but it's much lighter than this. I may get used to it, but at the moment it feels quite odd to wear. 

I did end up topstitching the dress neckline as the lining would occasionally peek out if I moved too vigorously (and it's white so it was very noticeable to me). I generally prefer not to do that but it doesn't bother me at all here. 

Something that does bother me is that the pockets aren't sitting right. I'm not sure why; it's not a problem I normally have with this skirt. 

I'm going to reserve judgement and see how much wear this dress gets over the summer. I do suspect it might not be much. I was prepared for the possibility that I wouldn't want to wear a lemon dress unless it was really high summer, not a cloud in the sky, twenty-eight degrees plus, but I hadn't factored in the heaviness of the fabric itself. On super-hot days (super-hot to me, a pasty Brit, anyway), I tend to favour floaty trousers and long skirts in light fabrics, which allows for breathability while also minimising the amount of exposed skin I have to reapply sunscreen to. I'm not sure that I'm going to reach for something this stiff with this many different areas of bare skin to keep track of when my feelings towards the garment are generally positive but not overwhelmingly so. On the other hand, I do think this style was the best way for me to go in terms of trying the print out. Anything with more coverage than a sleeveless scoop neck fitted minidress would just be... way too many lemons. 

Up next will be my summer sewing plans, followed by the rest of my projects from spring. Having struggled so hard to sew and write and take pictures, I now have about six weeks' worth of posts queued up and I'm starting to get concerned about my blogging being way out of step with the seasons. But I'll work something out!