I made the Lyra dress as a Guthrie & Ghani sewing society kit, and I loved that dress so much I decided to make another one. I kept everything exactly the same but I used a different fabric.
1. The fabric
I decided to make it out of linen this time, but rather than using 100% linen I decided that I wanted it to contain some viscose to reduce the wrinkles a bit and to improve the drape. I decided to buy the Sorona Viscose Linen Fabric from Gutheri & Ghani, so it’s quite a mixture of fibres and it even has a bit of cotton in it as well. It’s 45% linen, 22% viscose, 18% sorona and 15% cotton. I bought it in the ‘Grape‘ shade. When it arrived I was surprised at how substantial and solid it felt, the fabric has lots of drape and feels mostly like linen but the texture of the surface feels thicker than normal linen. It’s a really lovely fabric. I had some wooden buttons that I decided matched the fabric quite well so I decided to use them.
2. The pattern
I’ve blogged about the Lyra dress before so I won’t repeat myself. I did everything exactly the same as I did previously.
3. The challenges
When I did this pattern before I followed along with the Guthrie & Ghanie video guide and it was all very straight forward. I thought when making it the second time around I would just use the instructions, as I thought I would remember everything, but I was suprised how much I had forgotten! Particularly the section on how to do french seams for the pockets I was disappointed not to remember as it is very cool. Hopefully now I’ve done it a second time I’ll remember it a bit better, but I’m not sure I will! But there were no real challenges with this pattern, the fabric sewed beautifully, I knew that the dress fit me so I didn’t need to do anything fiddly with the fit, and it was just a joy to do. I find it is nice to sew a pattern you’re familiar with, particularly on those days where you’re a bit tired and just want to spend a happy day in the sewing room without any difficulties/worries.
4. The final result
As before, this has worked really well! I think the collar has turned out a bit better this time, perhaps it is the fabric but it feels more upright and sturdy. I am not 100% happy with my button choice, they are fine but I think perhaps some metallic buttons would have worked a bit better. All in all, a really satisfying sew.
The sewing resolution 