It gets towards the end of August and I start getting very indignant about the world and its wife telling me how summer is over. I cling onto summer with everything I have. Summer is the golden time.

People gleefully exclaiming that their favourite season is autumn never fails to leave me aghast. Yeah the leaves are pretty, but we can't go to the beach anymore, I can't tart around in next to no clothing and sandals. And days are getting back to routine and, most awfully, shorter.

Pumpkins, schmumpkins.

And. It's. Getting. COLD.

No no no no no.

I won't be told that just because the calendar says August is over that summer is too. The official end of summer in the US is Labor Day weekend (i.e. this weekend) but that seems incredibly arbitrary. What about those wonderful warm days of Indian Summer into September and even October around here? They always happen right?

Well, I might be typing this with a windows closed-A/C off situation for the first time since May (and a sweatshirt on) but I'm holding on to summer. You better believe it.

Not least because I have yet to sew all the summer things I had planned for this year. 7 out of the 23 items to be precise. That is a seriously poor showing. An over optimistic list but a poor (clearly linked to schools being out for 13, count them, weeks) showing nonetheless.

I get a bit frustrated with summer sewing. It, as I think it is for a lot of people, is my favourite clothing to sew, but I never seem to be as creative as I am for my colder weather wardrobe. It's simple dresses and this year even a whole bunch of basics. Shock!

I have all sorts of fun ideas for things that never materialise because they're not as useful and get shoved down the queue. This dress is one such that wrestled itself from the depths of the queue and did get made. I did so thinking I was so completely clever and then found that Lisa had already made it and Trine has too.

I finished it just before The Eye Incident* in July and have worn it so much. It walks that tricky line of being eminently useful, but also creative, vaguely on trend and a bit different, well in my mind anyway.

I spent a long time looking for exactly the right shape dress before I realised it was right under my nose. It's a modified Tessuti Ruby dress - which I've made before and have worn and worn and worn.

Incidentally I wore and blogged that Ruby last October, so clearly, I'm right and summer won't be over for a while ....

Modifications

My previous Ruby is a little tight around the armholes so I redrafted them slightly lower. I seem to have cut away too much as the shape isn't quite right so I'll fix that next time.
Took some of the fullness out of the dress so that it wasn't too pouffy by folding out sections along the hemline and disappearing those folds to nothing just below the bust.
To minimise fabric waste, I didn't cut the back on the fold, introducing a CB seam instead. This also made the back neck opening a cinch to do.
The ruffle is two rectangles the width of my fabric by 15" deep, sewn together, gathered and then sewn to the bottom of the skirt.
I did something accidentally really er, fancy (!) in enclosing that seam. The dress section was too long so I pinned and sewed the ruffle on before cutting the excess off the dress to get it the right length. I finally chopped off the extra leaving a little to wrap around the seam - kind of like you would for a flat felled seam but sown to the seam allowance rather than topstitched - if that makes any sense whatsoever. It adds a little bulk but actually, I think, helps the dress hang a little better.

The caper coloured linen is from The Fabric Store. It isn't super soft, but I can already feel it softening with wash and wear and the colour saturation and weight are really lovely. And I am not a linen junkie at all.

I will be seriously unhappy if I don't get a few more wears out of this before summer really is over. It's such an easy dress to wear and kind of goes any / everywhere. Those Tessuti ladies know a thing or two.

How do you feel about summer vs autumn?

In fact don't answer that. I can't bear that I am probably in the minority with my deep deep sorrow that the golden times are almost over for another year.

Much love and see you soon x

*The Eye Incident involved me, my six year old and a golf club. I still shudder at the thought of it but other than gradually diminishing floaters, no lasting damage.

Another tail-end Ruby