The Cloud dress is a pattern by "Sewing Pattern by Masin", a Swiss based independent designer who studied fashion design in Melbourne!
This sewing pattern originally appeared in the 4th edition of Tauko magazine, but the day she released it on her website I bought it straight away.
Those shoulder lines are just stunning and different, and the dress has a high twirling factor. And it has pockets!!! What is there not to love?
I had this organic washed denim ready for another project but I changed my mind and made this dress instead.
I had this crazy idea of starting to sew this dress at 1pm and having it ready for a party that evening at 6pm. Could I do it?
Well... no.
My iron died (brand new one - 3rd one in 6 months - seems good irons are really hard to find), and then I made a cutting mistake so I had to cut and wash more fabric. Game over.
The dress also took a lot longer to sew then expected... so many gathers!
But I love it!
It's comfortable and elegant and a dress I could wear any day.
The fit is great too. With me, there is always a risk that the shoulders or the armscye end up too tight if I base the size on my bust measurement (small bust) but it turned out just right.
I was a bit disappointed with the instructions though. They are mainly just text, with barely any images. It is what you would commonly see in a magazine, but for a PDF pattern from an independent designer we've become used to getting detailed step by step instructions.
If you are an experienced sewer you'll have no issue sewing this dress though, it's pretty easy. However, the lack of detail does mean that I wouldn't recommend this pattern for a beginner unless you get someone to help you. There would be quite a bit of head scratching as some steps are missing a few key details.
She didn't include pattern pieces for the skirt as these are just rectangles. This is great as it saves a lot of paper and she provided the dimensions of the rectangles to cut instead.
But there it got really confusing. A lot of head scratching ensued. The way she wrote this for the different sizes in both inches and cm made it very hard to figure out what size cut. Putting these details into a little table would make this a lot clearer.
What made this even more tricky is that she calls the long edge of each rectangle "length" and the short edge "width". Maybe it's me, but this should be the other way around.
The width is what goes around your body (the longest edge) and also what you would cut along the width of the fabric and the shortest edge is what determines the length of the skirt, so should be called length.
As a result, I cut the first rectangle wrong and had to cut more fabric to wash to do this again (the luxury of having a fabric store).
But all that aside, it's a beautiful well-drafted pattern, and a dress I enjoyed sewing. And I would happily make another one... a maxi dress version in a viscose fabric would be divine!
Project summary:
Sewing Pattern: Cloud Dress by Masin
Size: 2
My measurements are: 88 bust, 73 waist, 102 hip, 178cm tall
Modifications: lengthened the bodice by 4cm (common adjustment for me), shortened the skirt pieces/ each tier by 2.5cm as I wanted the hem to fall on my knee.
Fabric: 3 metres of Washed Organic Denim
Buttons by Atelier Brunette in the colour River.
