Blue Belle Season

I've been wanting to make more dresses to improve my sewing skills and kill time / use up excess fabric stash so since my friend Aimi is always complimenting my dresses I offered to make her one for her birthday. She had already picked out a fabric she liked from a bargain hoard I bought from lovely Helen:

And although I secretly wanted to keep that fabric for myself, as everyone knows, bagsy is a complete and final done deal!
I used vintage Style pattern 2382 again:

Regular readers might remember that I used it before for this dress, except this time I made it sleeveless (last time I used the sleeve pattern from the overcoat and adjusted it for use in the dress). This pattern is not really intended for stretch fabrics, but the fabric I was using was stretchy, however I found that it didn't make much difference other than being slightly trickier to sew! Despite that it turned out as one of the most well-made and fabulous dresses I've ever created:

And luckily it fits like a glove! And Aimi looks gorgey in it! This was also the first dress I've ever hemmed properly (e.g. by hand) and although it takes a while it certainly gives a nicer and more professional looking finish so I was extra pleased about that. The dress is a sort of landmark for me as I can see that my skills are gradually improving, which is very encouraging!
Some close ups:

La Boutons

I added vintage orange flower buttons to complement the blue, which I think makes the dress extra special! I'm a little bit jealous of Aimi now, but one thing I have realised is that when you make dresses for yourself, you don't really have the opportunity to look at them much, whereas I can admire this one from afar.

Aimi's dress was inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Pleasure Seekers and halloumi!