What a perfect summer dress! I’ve always wanted to sew these popular styles of dresses, that incoporates fun ruffle details and loose flowy skirts and then I came across this gorgeous pattern!

Choosing the pattern

I’ve never sewn a pattern by Made Label, but this specific dress just screamed chic summer vibes and I couldn’t resist! The Freya Belle Dress is a stunning pattern that features a frill detail on the sleeves and a wrap skirt with skinny ties that holds everything together.

Choosing the fabric

I have become one with cotton. I honestly feel that cotton fabrics are such a dream to sew and when the fabric quality is soft and buttery that why on earth would I want to sew with anything else?! This Robert Kaufman Cotton Lawn which you can find on Minerva here, is such a great light dress weight fabric that isn’t see through and isn’t rigid. The fabric is super vibrant in person and holds the ruffles feature of this dress beautifully. Can’t recommend this fabric more – this was gifted to me in an exchange for a review, but I have really started to love working with cotton lawns and this is no exception!

Construction

I made a size 10 in this dress and honestly it fits really well. It has a wrap detail, so any body weight fluctuations make this type of dress so forgiving and putting it on is a breeze. I decided to make tie straps instead of the one in the pattern with the little ring adjusters – this is purely because I don’t have an at home and haven’t tried this method of making straps that way yet.

You do need a lot of bias binding to make this dress as the whole neckline and frill is finished in this way – which does make such a neat and professional finish but my god it was a little tricky! If you follow me on Instagram you would’ve seen me spending ages making it from scratch with the actual fabric, but you can always buy store-bought binding or buy one of those neat binding making clip things!

Overall, I absolutely love this style of dress and am so happy with the final result! I know I’ll get a lot of wear in this over summer! My only thing to warn is that with wrap dresses, sometimes the front can fly open if there is a gust of wind – you don’t see anything! But you do get a glimpse of your high thigh… I don’t think there’s a solution to this as it is a wrap dress but something to bear in mind.