Sewing the Nelly Dress in My Grandma's Silk

I had a summer wedding coming up, and that always feels like a good excuse to make a new dress. I had this grey-blue silky fabric with blue roses on it from my grandma's stash, and I'd had it sitting around for about a year without touching it.

It's beautiful fabric, but it's silky, which makes it slippery and hard to sew. I was nervous about using it and kept putting it off. This time I decided to just go for it.

Finding the Pattern

I started out looking at plain silk slip dresses, some with a cowl neck, one with a high neck halter. Then I heard about Vikisews. I'd used one of their patterns before for the Jaya Top, and they have some more complicated intermediate patterns I've wanted to try.

That's where I found the Nelly Dress, a close-fitting bias cut dress with a low V-neckline. I loved the flounce along that neckline, and that it continues right into the straps.

Running Short on Fabric

Nelly is designed to be ankle-length, and I barely had enough of the silk. I had to cut the dress a little shorter than that. At my height it actually worked out perfectly.

Cut on the Bias, No Zipper

Nelly is cut on the bias and doesn't use a zipper at all. There's an underbust seam on the front and the back is shaped with waist darts, and the fit comes mostly from that bias cut plus the ties at the front. Cutting on the diagonal takes more fabric, and since I was already so short on the silk, I was worried I'd run out before I even finished cutting.

The Lining

For the lining, I used some old grey silky bed sheets I had in my sewing closet. Nelly has a free-hanging lining, and the pattern is picky about it. It actually says the lining should match the properties of the main fabric closely or the dress can end up distorted. My bed sheets were maybe a little heavier than the silk, but close enough in drape that the dress still moved the way I wanted. That extra weight ended up working out for summer too, since it catches sweat before it gets through to the silk.

The Flounce Straps

Flounces are still pretty new to me. I'd only done them once before, on the Jaya Top, and this fabric being so slippery made the curved seams tricky again. For the narrow hem on the flounces, I used the trim the excess trick: you stitch, trim really close to the stitching, then fold and stitch again. By Hand London has a good breakdown of this method if you want to see it step by step. There are also a bunch of other tricks for narrow hems on curved edges, the tissue paper method is a popular one, so if this one doesn't click for you it's worth googling around to find what works best for you.

If you look close up, you can see all my mistakes on the flounces. It didn't really matter to me though, it still looks stunning from afar.

I've worn it twice now and I'm really happy with how it turned out. If you make a Nelly Dress, tag me on Instagram @DesignsbyERB. I'd love to see it.