When Lilou met Anna

This is the result of combining the bodice of the Lilou pattern from Tilly's book and the skirt of the Anna dress from By Hand London.

I liked the Lilou dress when I saw it but I'd kind of had enough of pleated skirts for a while after my Flora dress escapade. I wanted something simpler, and then I remembered making the Anna dress a while back and how much I liked the paneled skirt.

With some strategic folding and measuring of pattern pieces it was relatively easy to match the skirt to the bodice. I just wanted to make sure that the back darts matched up with the seams of the skirt panel pieces and that everything matched at the side seams.

I carried out an SBA on the Lilou bodice which worked fine, although I think I could have taken a wee bit more out, but I can live with it.

Fabric is a medium-weight cotton that drapes quite nicely. From, you guessed it, Goldhawk Road. (Luckily I'm going back to London in July so I'll be able to replenish my Goldhawk Road section of the fabric stash as it is going down fast.)

All in all I really like this dress, it is really comfortable and simple and I think I'll wear it a lot. And I love the print.

Some detail shots of the inside (check out the overlocked edges, swooon!):






And I want to highlight two great posts from superstar Belgian bloggers that helped enormously with the dress:

• Hanne's post about low/high bust adjustments was perfectly timed for me with this project as I read it just before I started to modify the Lilou bodice. It is such a good piece of knowledge - I'm going to check all patterns for this from now on!
• And Lieke's recent post on the merits of moving the zipper over to the side seam was also food for thought before making this dress. See Lieke's great tutorial here.

Last Saturday was a also a mini Belgian sewing blogger meetup in lovely Leuven.

It was lots of fun, especially as we got to say 'Proficiat' to Sew it Up champion Anneke in person!

And...I visited Pauli Stoffen for the first time. Seriously one of the nicest fabric shops I've ever been to! Not only is the shop well-stocked, aesthetically pleasing, and friendly but they wrap the fabric you buy in nice brown paper so when you take it home it feels like you have lots of presents to open  - yes, presents you bought yourself but presents all the same.