Easter Aqua Swirl Dress

A
Jul 31, 2020
4 min read

Updated: Feb 5, 2022

I made the Swirl Dress from "Gertie Sews Jiffy Dresses" last summer, and it quickly became my favorite dress of the summer. It's a pretty simple wrap dress with a back opening that comes together fairly quickly. Last time I used a colorful quilting cotton from Joann's, but this time I experimented with the Waverly pre-cut cotton panels at Walmart. This was not the best fabric choice for this project. I was wearing gloves while at the store, so I couldn't get a good sense of the feel of the fabric and it turned out to be much heavier than I expected. It's not particularly soft and it wrinkles incredibly easily - ironing has minimal effect on this wrinkling. Going forward I'll be sure to pick lighter fabrics when I want this to be a summer dress. However, it's still a fun dress to wear!

One change that I made for both of my Swirl Dresses was to swap out the fabric waist tie with grosgrain ribbon. Since this dress was going to be a solid aqua shade, I decided to accent the belt with a contrasting grey ribbon with white polka dots. Easter - it looks like an Easter dress that I happened to finish 3 months after the holiday. The ribbon is super cute, but I was worried about how it would look after multiple bow tyings and going through the washing machine since the dots are screen-printed on. After a few wears the dots are wearing off in a few places, but overall they still look fine.

Closeup of the ribbon belt; you can see where one of the polka dots is starting to crack.

Another detail that I decided to add to mix things up was to add some detail stitching around the outer edge of the dress - neck, back, and hem. I picked my favorite stitch on my machine (I believe that it's intended to be a fagoting stitch, but I like any excuse to play with extra settings on my machine) and used a similar grey as the ribbon belt to accent the edge. I think that this helped to spice up the solid colored fabric.

Closeup of the detail stitching.

I'd read in the Gertie Facebook group that some people like to pleat the necklines of their swirl dresses, rather than gather, and decided to give that a try. I had to baste a contrast thread about an inch from the neckline to tack the pleats in place on the front so that the top stitching wouldn't catch and distort them - and the basting stitches had to be sewn in the same direction as the pleats, so they each came from the shoulder and stopped in the middle of the front. After the top-stitching was done I pulled out the basting stitches. Sewing and pulling the basting stitches took a few extra minutes, but it was so worth it when the top-stitching went on smoothly! I like the overall effect, but next time I'll make the pleats go the other direction. I like adding the fancy top-stitching to the neckline because it helps keep the facing on the inside of the dress - under-stitching wasn't enough to keep it in place on this one.

Pleats on front of dress.

Of course I added pockets - standard inseam pockets to hold most of what is needed throughout the day.

Since this is a wrap dress, there is always the risk of the skirt opening a little too wide leading to a wardrobe malfunction. Since the opening is in the back there is the double risk of not noticing the malfunction right away. For my last swirl dress I made a petticoat to wear underneath the dress to minimize the potential exposure. However, some of the measurements were a little bit off, and the petticoat ended up being way to long for the dress. So this time I left the skirt at the full length - mid calf - and it fit over the petticoat!

Skirt hiked up into the pocket to reveal the petticoat with smiley face lace trim.

I made one other change to this pattern, and it may be my signature design detail for the swirl dress since I used it on both. To combat the gaping at the back I added a hook and eye to close the dress more securely and to make sure that it closes above the back of my bra. On top of the hook and eye I placed a small ribbon bow as a final accent detail.

Closeup of the bow details - since the mannequin and I are slightly different sizes the top of the bra shows through on her, but fortunately not on me.