Hi everyone! It’s Rae, popping in for a moment to introduce you to Jessica, who works here at Made By Rae Enterprises. She calls herself an assistant but if you saw how many hats she wears on a daily basis (answering emails, coordinating testing for patterns, putting together blog posts, sending print pattern orders, sewing samples, communicating with sponsors, running giveaways, and it goes on…), you’d see she’s more like a Director of Operations. In addition to being an all-around indispensable individual, she also happens to be my cousin and loves to sew and knit as well; the crafty gene runs strong in our family. Can you see the resemblance? As you can imagine, when Elli, Jess and I get together, it’s pretty obvious we’re family (incidentally, Karen and Tashina, who work at the studio here in Ann Arbor, are NOT related to me; we’re not a family-only operation…hee).

Anyway, Jess has spent the last few weeks coordinating testing for the new spring pattern, Bianca (you can see the original Bianca top that I posted last summer here), and when she made this lovely dress version (the pattern will come in two lengths, a dress and a top), I asked if she’d share it on the blog and she said yes. So, here’s Jess and her awesome Bianca:

Hello, dear Raeders! So happy to be here to share my Bianca dress. Let’s start with the awesome fabric. This is Nani Iro double gauze Colorful Pocho in the colorway Berry Field. I ordered it online from Purl Soho last fall, and it’s a hard to come by anywhere online now. It was a print from last summer, so let’s cross our fingers for more! The contrast fabric is Kaffe Fassett’s Shot Cotton in apricot. I love the shot cottons so much. Every time I order fabric, I choose a couple of the colors and grab a few yards. They’re super duper soft, and the contrasting thread colors in the warp/weave of the fabric give the fabric a shimmery depth. Hawthorne Threads has the biggest selection of colors, but I’ve gotten it from Pink Chalk too.

The default view for Bianca is to sew it with the facings on the inside (like in Rae’s Tomato Rayon top), but tips are included for outside facings, as I’ve chosen to do on this version. I love that you can see how the garment is constructed with the facing on the outside like this.

The waist shaping comes from the elastic that runs from one edge of the front facing, around the back, to the other edge of the facing. The pattern will have options either to sew two lines of shirring or an elastic casing (I chose the elastic casing for this one).

The contrast facing at the bottom hem is my own modification…hmmm, maybe we’ll give you a tutorial on that sometime? It helped me straighten out the hem, and added a little bit of length because I used every last inch of my double gauze for this dress.

So lovely to meet you all. Can’t wait to share more Bianca with you soon!

Meet Jess and her awesome Nani Iro Bianca

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