That said, one of the projects I took with me was this!
You may recognize the fabric from the Fiesta dress I made my Josefina doll, and the pattern from the green dress I made for Addy, both last year. Truthfully, I've had this dress cut out and half finished for a long time, but what was stymieing me was applying the soutache braid. My main sewing machine is a Singer 15 from the 1950s, and I was trying to find a foot that would allow me to machine sew the soutache trim on.
Such a thing does exist. It's rare and costs over $150 when one comes up on the market.
So I finally accepted defeat and sewed all the skirt trim on by hand while in England. It actually wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting, just slow. Doing it on a doll size dress is... acceptable. Backstitch works much better than running stitch. But if I ever wanted to decorate something for myself with soutache, however, I would buy another, newer, machine that has a foot that can handle it, and dedicate it to that purpose.
Anyhow, the pattern is the Cape Island Dress by Kindred Threads, and while I have two tweaks to it (take some width out of the center of the front collar piece, and less foldback on one side of the skirt) it sews up very nicely. I will probably use it again, as I have six yards of pink soutache to use up at some point....
But for now I need to go start packing for Costume College.
