Caftan What?

Seems that this is a species of dress, not just a generic dress. Originally more like a jilbaab, now degenerated to comfortable dress for women to keep their armpits free, still covering the modesty of the shoulders and granting the whole the female sex great opportinities to draw looks into the cleavages (see pic here). Research done, and pointing out that I don’t like seeing women’s cleavages, I will move on to tell you about a little dress I made recently.

The pattern is Chalie Caftan from Closet Case patterns. It is a caftan dress, apparently. The pattern offers 3 versions, I chose the short version with high sleeves and gathered front.

For this pattern I bought my favorite fabric ever, a double-gauze by Nani Iro. It was an offer in John Lewis, so quite affordable £9/m, I used 2m. By the way, I had to google what this double-gauze business was as well. Very pretty but a bit tricky the first time. Learning curve!

The pattern is easy if you know what you are doing. I find it very difficult to understand sewing written instructions. There were four difficulties I came across while sewing this dress:

• turning straps to the right side – took a log time
• unpicking (as I had to unpick the following points on this wonderful double-gauze)
• the point in V neck – fabric slips – had to draw point with a pencil and sew over it
• front panel – didn’t understand instructions at 1 am.

I really like the result and I won’t tell you where I did a botch job. I love wearing this double-gauze and the print is sooooo cute. I didn’t make any alterations and I think the length of the skirt is perfect. If I do it again, I want to but I am not sure I will have the time, I will make sure I follow these tips.

The photos below show the dress after a whole day sat at the office. Sadly, I think don’t the fabric is shown in these photos as pretty as it is in real life, just the problem I have with photographs!