Have you seen the Lizzie Bennet Diaries?

No?

Then what are you doing here? Go and watch them, like yesterday! I’ll wait here, promise.

Done? THEY’RE SO GOOD RIGHT. I’ve been watching them obsessively last year. I should probably not admit how many times I’ve rewatched them by now. Mr. Darcy never did anything for me, so I wasn’t really rooting for him in the book, but dear God did I get invested in Darcy/Lizzie from those videos. And don’t get me started with Jane and Bing … well, no, let’s talk about Jane. She was by far my favourite character in the Diaries. I loved her. I loved her style. I wanted to have her entire wardrobe. I fancied the Mod Cloth Gazebo Dreaming Dress in particular:

Instead of painstakingly hunting down the exact same dress (difficult here in Germany!), I figured I’d just sew it for myself. Didn’t learn it for nothing, did I? I pieced together a pattern – the top is from a Burda evening gown and the skirt from Burda Young. Finding the right fabric proved to be harder. I had to dig through every single fabric pile in my local fabric store (and there were many) until I found this dark blue denim fabric. It’s darker than I had imagined, but I thought it’d make a nice contrast to the lace.

A lesson I learnt from this project: If you use two different patterns, then they won’t fit together perfectly. It’s so simple, but apparently I’m an idiot, because I was very surprised when I realized very close to finishing the dress that it was way too big at the top. I had to put in two darts at the back (and before I had already added four pleats at the skirt, two at the front and two at the back). It was frustrating to say the least since I had to open up a lot of seams.

The fabric creases easily, unfortunately, but otherwise I’m very pleased with this dress. It’s happy and summer-y, just like I imagined. I already took it out to a party a few weeks ago, and it did carry itself very well, if I may say so.

We also tried to take a picture of me sitting on a wall as a direct homage to the original, but unfortunately it was so windy that day that I kept flashing all passers-by, so you’ll have to forgive me the goofy picture. Jane does sitting on a wall a lot more elegantly than I do.