par Melanie for Following The Thread For my Fall project, I decided to make a Jalie set — two patterns from their spring release but made Fall-friendly! I chose to make the Jalie Bianca (a pattern I’ve been eyeing for a while now) in Feather Wale Corduroy — I chose Eggplant, but there are tons of colours to choose from in this beautiful fabric.
I thought that corduroy would work nicely as a fall dress and also as a jumper. To go along with this, I added on the Jalie Florence to wear as part of the jumper outfit.
The corduroy is soft and malleable, and was a real pleasure to work with. But as it’s corduroy there is really no drape so I chose to make the straight shift view without sleeve bands. It’s perfect as a straight jumper style dress, with no closures to worry about. And these are the best patch pockets — huge and attached into the side seams as well as being topstitched.
This pattern has no closures, but both front and back are cut in two, with a centre seam. If my corduroy had a bigger wale so that the stripes were more noticeable, I might have cut the two front pieces on alternating grainlines so that one was vertical and one horizontal. I think the play of light and texture on the two would be interesting! But since this fabric is very fine, I just went with one direction for the whole dress, the nap facing down.
And since I wanted to fully line this dress/jumper to make it comfy to wear with tights, I made a couple of small changes. I used bias facing all around the neck so that I could sew the shoulder seams of both dress and lining and baste together at the neckline before attaching the bias facing. I could have just sewn the lining in as the finish, but I prefer lining to sit under a facing at the neckline, because I feel like otherwise a bit of the lining always rolls out no matter how carefully I understitch it. That’s just me; you could definitely finish the neckline with the lining if you’re less worried about that than I am!
As for the Florence top, I absolutely love this pattern! I chose this black and white cotton (ANGELA cotton print – Stokes – White); it has a bit more body than intended for the Florence, but it’s still a shirt weight cotton. I love the crispness of the finished top, and this amazing print. It feels so 80s, my favourite!
This is an easy pattern and didn’t require many adjustments or fancy sewing. The plackets are folded over, the collar has an interesting method of attachment, the opposite of what I’m used to, attaching it to the inside and flipping it out to topstitch from the right side. There’s also a nice low, curved back seam and pleat on the lower half of the back. Because of this extra ease, you don’t need to grade between sizes even if you usually do, there’s plenty of room as drafted. I’d usually do an X/Y or even a W/Y blend on some Jalies but this one was perfect as it was.
Both of these projects work great on their own, but also match up perfectly in more than one way as a paired outfit. The only catch here is that the armhole of the Bianca could be 1/2″ lower and the Florence a smidge higher to work together optimally, but I’m not complaining. I love them both and adore this black and white print, and the purple corduroy.
