I’ve decided to try to reproduce the Vivienne Westwood wrap dress rather than using one of the Burda patterns for my next project – thanks for all the suggestions!

But in the meantime I have managed to finish my last project, the hoodie dress. This one has been nothing but aggravation. It started badly with my shrinking my original fashion fabric in the washing machine. I replaced it with some lovely black ponte knit from John Lewis. The ponte is made of viscose and melts if you press it on too high a heat. You can guess what happened. Suffice to say that I didn’t intend the dress to be quite this short.

The interesting detail on this pattern is that as the zipper is at the back and the neckline is very high there also has to be a zipper in the hood so you can get it over your head. I decided to make a feature of this and do exposed zips rather than the invisible ones the pattern suggested. It took me three goes to get the back zipper in without it going wavy. I seem to have completely lost my touch with zips lately. And the less said about the finish at the ends of the zips, the better. I decided to bind the neckline seam rather than use facings, and made a total hash of it. I’m pleased to find that you can’t see it at all in the pictures. I really need to practice binding seams.

The hood is nice and big though, and I added inseam pockets, which I managed to place too low.

They can’t all be successes but at least it’s wearable!