 Hey guys, welcome back to Inside the Hymn. I am Lindsay and today I'm here on behalf of Blank Slate Patterns where I'll be reviewing my new Catalina dress. This was my last review, this is the Winter Song dress. I will leave a link in the description box below to see my review on this dress. But today we're going to be talking about the Catalina dress. Blank Slate's blog theme this month is travel. And so I put a lot of thought into what I like to wear when I travel. I recently went to Montreal where I was on five airplanes in three days. It's not that far from me, but in order to get somewhere sometimes you have to take multiple planes. Otherwise you pay a gazillion dollars to go somewhere for a few days, which I'm not about. So when I traveled a few weeks ago I found myself reaching for maxi dresses and I think that there is a good argument for wearing maxi dresses when you travel on planes. One of them is well first of all let's just address people's wardrobe on planes in general. Like when did it become okay to wear pajamas out in public anywhere but much less on an airplane? Like I remember not personally but you know I've seen in movies and you know throughout history books and heard from my grandparents that you know when they traveled on an airplane it was a huge deal and everyone pretty much dressed to the nines to travel on an airplane. I mean it was very fancy and a very big deal and nowadays I feel like people just roll out of bed and roll up to the airport and put no thought into what they wear at all and that's really disappointing to me. I mean sure do you have a 6 a.m flight and is it really annoying to get up and get ready and put on makeup and all that at 6 a.m? Absolutely it is. But eventually like the time goes by and you're still traveling at 9 a.m or at noon depending on where you're going and you're still in your pajamas. You still roll out of bed and now it's the middle of the day so it doesn't it doesn't make sense anymore. So I always like to be prepared and so whenever I travel via airplane there are no yoga pants, there's no pajamas, I brush my hair, I put on makeup, I act like an adult, I get it together to go out into public as one should. So but back to the maxi dresses okay so this is why maxi dresses are perfect for traveling on airplanes. One is I like I said was on several airplanes throughout my trip. One of them I was iced out, I was freezing cold the whole time. The other four that I was on well the other three of them was okay temperature like I was fine and then one of them I was so so so hot. So temperature regulation on an airplane is just impossible. There's never going to be the perfect temperature from one plane to the next. So a maxi dress is great because you can leave it long and it'll cover your legs like a blanket or you can even pull up to him and you know not too far but rest it on your on your thigh and then you can get some circulation going on the bottom half of your legs. You wear like a cardigan or a light jacket to cover your shoulders or why I opted for the extended shoulder version of this was because I could get a little bit more coverage there. There are two versions well there's several versions of the Catalina but in terms of the shoulder seam there's two. You can do a tank or you can do this like extended shoulder sleeve which I think is just super flattering on so many people. So but yeah the length is really nice because you can kind of use it as a blanket if you need it or you know lift it up if you need some circulation there. Also I feel like a maxi dress is the quintessential day to night garment even if it's in a casual jersey fabric like this one depending on how you accessorize it or what kind of shoes you're wearing you could totally get up in the morning get on the airplanes travel travel travel and then when you get there head out even go to dinner or show in something like this and you're not feeling like you're underdressed. I think it's one of those things that you can dress up and dress down really really simply and that's perfect for traveling because the last thing you want to do is spend more time in your hotel room changing or getting ready like you want to get there and you want to get hit the streets and get going and start exploring the city that you're in. So that's what I found myself doing when I was in Montreal so whenever I was tasked with finding an outfit perfect for traveling for a blank slate I was naturally drawn to her Catalina dress. She has a few other maxi dresses but I really liked this one because of the elastic waist. I like the scoop neckline. All of it in general was kind of just very simple and straightforward which seemed very relaxed and casual and something easy to travel and you don't want something too fussy you know when you're traveling. It also has these really great pockets very very deep pockets I think they go down to about here which is nice to hold little things you know when you're traveling you're grabbing things here and there you've got things put away in places and in pockets and bags and stuff so it's nice if you need like your boarding pass or something really handy you can just keep it right here in one of the pockets. I did think though that based on the pictures on the website I was a little concerned because the skirt looked a little straight. It looks like a column skirt and whenever I looked at the pattern pieces themselves too they are rectangles and so I got nervous because I am a quintessential pear shape. I have a lot more width in my hips than I do in my waist and so I was like I'm not sure how this is going to work around my hips. I ended up measuring I did a straight medium for the entire thing bust waist and hip and I ended up measuring the hip measurement for the medium and there was plenty of ease there for my waist so good job drafting that Melissa that was awesome you know you can cinch in the waist for those pear shaped people you can cinch in the waist and to any degree you know I could have cinched this in even more if I needed to but the hip measurement is really I needed to make sure that I was going to cover my hips but because it's a column I was nervous that there wouldn't be enough width at the hem of the skirt to walk in it looked really narrow in her pictures and it could just be the angle of them so I decided to do a split hem where basically where the side seams of the skirt are I just surged down to the knee line and then from the knee line down to the hem I just turned the seams in half an inch and created a little slit there that way whenever you walk you know you have lots of freedom you know sometimes you're in an airport and you're running from one place to the next literally there's lots of stairs there's you know all kinds of different things so I just want to make sure I had enough freedom of movement in my legs so I did the split hem super super simple to do um and was really proud of myself because I thought through the hemming of the little angle that it would create so whether you're doing any split hem at all whether it's on a top of like a bodice or if it's on a skirt you can create a really nice finish on the insides which as you all might remember that's one of my big New Year's resolutions for 2017 to really focus on what things look like on the inside as well as the outside so with that in mind I created the miter hem miter corner and I was really really proud of that I ended up using my cover stitch machine on every single raw edge so for the neckline I did cut a piece of bias tape and I sewed it right sides together and then flipped the entire thing over to the inside I didn't fold it under and then turn it over I just turned raw edge and all over to the inside cover stitch the whole thing and then trimmed the excess bias tape off which gave a really nice neckline that lives really really flat so I'm really proud of that and then on the sleeves I kind of went rogue on her instructions a little bit and instead of sewing the sides seams first and then creating the bite and then doing the bias tape in the round for the for the sleeves instead I just on when it was flat whenever the bodice was flat and the shoulder seam they're sewn together and you have that little seam shape I just turned that in one time the seam allowance half an inch and cover stitch that flat and then sew the side seams together and that to me just produced like a much well it was easier to do first of all and I just didn't see the need of doing the bias tape on the on the on the arm hole she suggests woven bias tape I go back to the neckline and I didn't I just did self bias tape so I used the same fabric to do the bias tape which gives a nice look on the inside too of course you can follow her directions to the T and of course you will still have a great garment but you know I wanted to to do some techniques that I felt more comfortable with and so those are the two big things that I did for the neckline and the arm hole so I sewed the skirt to the bodice with the waistband casing exactly how the instructions tell you to do and um you know didn't didn't do anything extra there I will say that I did do some extra basting stitches she only has you do one and I just felt more comfortable doing two I like when you're when you're gonna be um sewing when you're gonna be gathering something and you have to sew that gathered piece to another piece that's not gathered so you gather the skirt on this pattern you gather the skirt to be the width of the bodice and then you sew those two things together so I just like to have two rows of basting stitches that one is slightly above and one is slightly below the seam allowance so that whenever you sew that seam allowance to the bodice the gathers are a little bit more even and a little bit more like kind of just like held in place a little bit better um so that's really the only thing that I did there a very small just extra step um that I added to the waistband casing but other than that um that is that's really it that's that's um all the changes that I made for this dress um I will say there are several versions of this there are like I said about the shoulders there's the tank version and then this extended sleeve um you can also do it um a little bit above the knee a little bit below the knee and then maxi length and also I want to say too she was super smart whenever she um put the because you know it's a pdf that you print out she doesn't have printed patterns so when you're piecing all of that together um you know a maxi dress can take up a lot of pieces of paper that you have to tape together she avoided that by just having the above the knee cut line the below the knee cut line and then there's a little instruction there that you want the maxi dress to add 14 inches on to your size cut line of the below the knee version so I thought that that was really really smart especially for those of you that are petite and end up having to him um your maxi dresses anyways um instead of adding 14 inches you just add 10 inches or add you know whatever it is that you need so I really loved that I ended up making mine a little bit longer so that I could wear it with um wedges that's just more comfortable to me than flats I don't I don't know but whenever I travel I wear wedges so I made it a little bit longer to cover the shoe a little bit better um but yeah so you didn't have to piece together like a ton of sheets of paper just for a square you know what I'm saying so that was really smart and helpful and I really appreciated that whenever you know I didn't have to print out a gazillion sheets of paper for you know one big square so kudos to Melissa for that really thoughtful and appreciate um saving the trees and saving the time and energy it takes to piece together the the pattern the the pdf pattern I didn't have to make any alterations to the pattern pieces at all like I said I cut a straight medium and it fits me really well I think all over it um a lot of times whenever you cut one size especially if you're pear shaped it can be too big on top or too small on the bottom and I really don't feel like I had that issue with this dress at all I feel like it fits just as well um on the bodice and the bust as it does in the hips even though I cut the same size so um just just some really generous drafting there I mean it is a gathered skirt and it is an elastic waistband so you know you are going to have the ability to um cinch in more than you would if it were you know not elastic waistband or you know the skirt is a little bit more generous because of those gathers um so so yeah I was really pleased with that so yeah this is my new go to travel garment um I don't really have any plans to go anywhere anytime soon since we just got back um we've got the move coming up to the new apartment my birthday is coming up in august um sometimes we go somewhere sometimes we don't um my next trip will probably be back to New York City in the fall and I think that this will be perfect this is well also just a note on the fabric um it is liberty print jersey that I got from fabric.com here it is liberty of london d4 jersey knit heidi maria eggplant is what it's called um it was 18 bucks and no longer available sorry um but liberty of london jersey knit I'm sure you can find in a different print but I do think that this particular print being purple and white and I don't know if you can tell um from where you are but um it has seashells and um other like little fawn sea underwater fawn type of things um sand dollars things like that all over it so it is kind of like a beachy print but without being like in your face obvious beachy but I think the color I love purple I think purple is one of my secret favorite colors um I'm just drawn to it a lot but what I loved about this being purple and white and that's it is that I feel like you can wear this spring summer and fall it's one of those colors that really is going to transition through the seasons um so I'm sad that it's sold out but maybe you guys can find it somewhere else I will link the um fabric dot com link for the fabric so that you guys can read about the content and get the name of it so that you can try and search for it somewhere else if you want um but I mean a liberty maxi dress who look at me right like I'm so fancy I think it's the first um maybe the first liberty garment I've ever made even though I have liberty print I might have a top but definitely not a dress definitely not a maxi so I really love it I really really love it I think someone turned out really really great so yeah I'll have lots of links in the description box below um I'll have a link to the pattern itself obviously um like I said I'll link to the winter song dress that I'm wearing um the video that I made for that I will link to the fabric and if you guys have any questions or comments about the dress please feel free to leave them in the comment section below otherwise I think I have a couple more videos for you guys um in this space and then I move in like two weeks a little less than two weeks at this point now so um I'll be busy doing that um so stay tuned lots of exciting things thanks for watching see y'all soon bye