Silk/Lace Ruby Dress

You may have noticed on our Instagram feed that I've been working on a new dress for our Tessuti Sydney Christmas party. As usual, I left things to the very last moment and only decided on what to make two nights before. With that limited time I settled on our Ruby Dress pattern.

I used a combination of lace, silk satin and georgette for my dress. I've held onto a small remnant of this stunning black French lace with double scalloped edge (similar laces stocked in Melbourne and Surry Hills only) waiting for just the right project and - happily - 40cm was all I needed for this yoke. The bottom part of the dress is made up on the matte side of our Black Heavy Silk Satin (similar to this) and I lengthened the dress by 10cm. To join the yoke to the dress I just placed the scalloped edge of the lace over the body of the dress on the front and back and stitched it in place. 

The double folded neck and armhole binding is cut out of Black Silk Georgette. I wanted a different effect for the neck and armhole binding so to do this I folded the georgette bias binding strips in half (as instructed in the pattern) but instead sewed the folded edge part to the neck and armhole edges, then simply turned back the sewn edge towards the inside and understitched on the right side catching the binding seam allowance at the back. I love the raw edge effect (similar to the bind finish on our Silva Shirt Jacket) and the way it frames the lace yoke. I also used the georgette to bind the keyhole at the back neck.

I really love this dress and now finally have my very own LBD which was perfect for our fabulous Christmas party at Da Mario on Saturday night. Such a fun night and as it turned out I wasn't the only one wearing the Ruby pattern! Same dress/same party can be an embarrasing thing but not with Ruby.  I'll show more photos of the other great versions in the next post so stay tuned...