Anna

My by hand London Anna is finally done! The last stitches in the hem were done this evening (by hand), and I've now got a pretty purple dress to wear.

It's taken me a while and a bit of work, but as I've mentioned in an earlier blog post, I've had good help from Sew me Love's research into making back adjustments to fit a short/ erect/ sway back.

I cut out this wedge from the back, taped the back piece together along the cut lines (barely showing in the photo, sorry) and straightened the center back line.

I moved the shoulders seams a little forward, and the side seams also had to be straightened - I needed more fabric in the front than in the back, so I added 1 cm to the front piece and cut the same cm off the back piece. These adjustments meant I have a dress back that fits my back, shoulder seams that sit at the top of my shoulders, and straight side seams.

Sadly I don't have any good photos from this process, only this really bad one where I'm turning my body to get a shot of the back. At least you can see that the dress back sits well on my back.

On this dress I tried French seams for the first time. They turned out quite nice, but my fabric was probably a bit thick for this. I ended up with quite chunky shoulder seams when I was pressing the neck facing.

V-neck finished with understitched facing.

This photo doesn't do the dress justice, the combination of a mediocre photographer, coat hanger and poor lighting does not make good photos.

Some better ones. My face wasn't though...