Striped Coco Dress

My love-hate relationship with jersey continues.  I had such a lovely experience with Agnes, so I finally plucked up the courage to try Coco and wham – not so lovely.  Mostly, it was the fabric’s fault.  It’s nice and soft, but it was difficult to work with.  It didn’t like to lie flat, so it took me ages to cut the pieces.  Once cut, the edges curled so it was fiddly to pin and sew, though it miraculously went through the sewing machine without being eaten.  On top of that, I had to match up stripes.  Stripes are a very simple pattern, so I thought they’d be very easy to match.  In reality, because the pattern is so strong, if you are as little as a millimetre out of alignment it’s screamingly obvious.  It took three attempts to get it matched up nicely, and unpicking jersey is not easy!  It all came together in the end though, and I finally (finally!) have a beautiful Coco dress, after having this fabric in my stash for over a year.  I adore my new dress!  What did I tell you?  Love-hate.

The pattern: Coco from Tilly and the Buttons.  It’s such a shame the fabric was a pain because the pattern is fantastic.  It’s very easy to follow and would have been a super-quick sew if I hadn’t had to match pattern.  I didn’t deviate away from the instructions at all.  Remember to take negative ease into account though – I didn’t do this for my toile (because I didn’t understand it at the time!) and now I have a top that is far too big.

The fabric: an interlock jersey from Plush Addict – I bought this with the voucher I won in the #SewingFrancoise contest.  The contrast red pockets were left over from my toile.  Plush Addict don’t stock this fabric anymore, but they have some similar striped Ponte di Roma.  If I were to make another Coco (which I will, who am I kidding?) I will probably use a ponte – I used ponte for my toile and it has more structure to it, so it was much less fiddly.  Also, this particular interlock is slightly see-through.  It’s fine with tights/leggings/a vest underneath, but I won’t be able to wear it bare-legged in the summer.

The cost: £17.90 for the striped fabric.  However, I reckon I’ve got almost a metre left – enough to make another garment, for sure.  The pattern costs £12.50, but I have already used it twice and will use it again.  I already had the thread, so not cost there.  That’s £30.40.

I’ve already got my next jersey project lined up.  I’ve bought this ditsy red floral from Fabric Godmother.  I can’t see it on the website at the time of writing this, so perhaps I got the last of it!  I’m going to use this to try out the Agnes dress hack on Tilly’s blog.  As I said, I enjoyed making Agnes, and I’ve deliberately chosen a fabric that won’t require any pattern matching at all 🙂