Pretty dress alert!!!

Today I’m sure with you a bit of a hack on the Fibre Mood Elma Dress – from edition number 10 of Fibre Mood magazine. This one was released back in 2020, but it is hands-down my favourite edition of Fibre Mood ever! Sooooo many good patterns in it.

I’ve sewn it up in a viscose that I purchased during a 50% off closing-down sale, so I feel as though I’ve achieved the holy grail of an awesome but inexpensive-as-fuck dress with this one!

My Fibre Mood Elma Dress

Ahhh Fibre Mood Elma. With the sweetheart neckline at the front, square neckline at the back and princess seams, I was immediately attracted by the overwhelming prettiness of the Elma Dress.

According to my waist measurements in the Fibre Mood chart, I should have sewn a size 20 for this one. When I looked at the finished garment measurements, I thought it would be safe to cut a 16 at the bust, grading to an 18 at the waist.

However, first thing I wanted to point out is that that turned out to be way too big for me.

I ended up sewing my side seam with a 1″ seam allowance to give the dress the shape that it needed.

So, it’s really quite a generous pattern in terms of sizing.

Hacking Fibre Mood Elma

Now, my version of the Fibre Mood Elma Dress definitely contains some hacks, compared to the original.

First, I have added 30 cms in length, to create a more “long midi/short maxi” length.

I have also added pockets. Because why wouldn’t you?

Further, I found that the dress still needed more shaping at the waist on me, so I added some ribbons as a back tie. I would have used fabric self-ties but I didn’t have enough fabric leftover to do so.

Also, the original Fibre Mood Elma has a different sleeve – one with an elasticised puffy kind of cuff. I found that maybe a bit OTT ‘cutesy’ for me, so I adapted the sleeve using the arm shape of the sleeves from the Duplantier Dress to create a longer and more bell-like shape.

Button woes

Now, I have a definite – “don’t do as I did” lesson with this one.

I had some perfectly coloured Atelier Brunette buttons that I wanted to use on this dress.

But, I really didn’t have enough of them.

No worries, I thought. I’ll just space them out a little more than usual. It’ll be fine.

Which I duly did.

But then, the first time I wore the dress, I looked down towards my bust and saw gaping at the bust, the stomach. All the places where you really want gaping, right?

So I promptly realised that stretching out 7 buttons to close a long button-front dress just doesn’t work.

As the dress actually fits over my head without the use of the buttons (remember how I said it was very roomy?), my solution to this problem has actually been to just topstitch the button placket down, so this has now become a faux shirt dress!

But there’s nothing faux about just how much I like this dress, though!!