Hello, I’m Korrie a plus size and still pretty newish sewist and maker, you can find me over on Instagram – @Korriekorrie. I was completely over the moon when Polina got in touch and asked if I would like to write a guest sewing blog about making Pattern Fantastique Mersis dress in one of her eco friendly fabrics.
It’s so nice having a one stop shop for sustainable fabrics and eco haberdashery.
Picking my fabric
So, onto the sewing… I knew that my fabric of choice had to be the Meet Milk Light Diamond Jacquard TENCEL but had a really hard time choosing between Amber and Cider – i eventually ended up choosing amber which i think was the perfect choice for sewing summer dress!
It has beautiful woven diamonds all over the fabric that i don’t think any photo can do justice to them or the colour it’s just magical!
Pattern Fantastique Mersis dress pattern
I think I was maybe influenced by the pattern I had in my head too, the Pattern Fantastique Mersis dress . The marketing photo is a bright yellow golden linen and the fabric and pattern were calling out to become a stunning summer dress!
The sewing journey
Looking at the dress I didn’t think it would be a hard make but, I found it to be a bit of a challenging construction, I prefer a set of generous instructions but found they read more like notes with not much detail (this could also be because of my inexperience).
Thankfully the beautiful Meet Milk Tencel fabric is very forgiving as i lost count of how many times i had to use my seam ripper. This was my first time sewing with Tencel fabric and it was a lovely sew, a tiny bit slippery and with some interesting curves in the construction my pin cushion sat empty for a while!
I made the ankle length version and didn’t make any modifications to the pattern, thankfully after a lot of head scratching it came together.
My verdict
All of the other versions I have seen have been made with linen or a similarly stiffer fabric but I couldn’t stop thinking of a softer romantic draped version and the light weight Meet Milk Tencel fabric has fit that vision perfectly.
The dress is a different shape to what I’m used to and having a bigger bust makes the dress fit over my body in a different way to others i have seen but the colour and sleeves just make me so happy when i’m wearing it. The diamonds catch the light and add dimension to the fabric as it moves and i can’t wait to take it to the beach on a hot day!
I couldn’t wait to style it up with my black rope sandals and took to the park on a cold March day to attempt my holiday fantasy, It would look amazing with some big gold hoops and chunky platforms for dressing it up too. I am completely in love with this Pattern Fantastique Mersis dress.
I can’t stop thinking of this as the most amazing Wilder Gown made with the Cider version now!
