Gusta Dress – Fibremood Book 6

This is the Fibremood Gusta Dress from Book 6 but also available as an individual pdf from The Foldline at just £8!

The image in the book/magazine provides little in the way of inspiration but delving deeper on the Fibremood website brought up many makers’ Gustas in cosy jacquard jerseys and also wovens.

I had picked up a couple of metres of this jersey suedette on a post lockdown whim at Fabworks Dewsbury for a very reasonable £7/m without much thought on what it was to become. It has stretch, although not too much, and great recovery.

The Gusta dress is fairly straight-cut dress with a rounded neckline and exposed zip at the back. It also has ingenious hidden pockets incorporated into the French darts.

I used a medium weight sharp woven needle to sew up the suedette. It was fine to machine sew although any hand sewing was tough on the fingers. Funnily enough, my cover stitch machine loved it! So I used it to hem the sleeves and the hem.

You do have to wear a slip underneath as it clings to tights and sits much nicer on the body with a slip, even when not wearing tights.

I made up a straight size 38 (UK size 10) in accordance with my measurements.

I tried it on whenever I could and unpicked the shoulder/sleeve seam to take 1cm off the shoulder width at the top and also down the front, necessary probably due to my forward shoulders.

It didn’t need the zip to get it over the head but I went back and put one in from my stash just to add a feature.

I didn’t finish off the seams inside in anyway. The jersey sueduette does not fray at all and actually looks neat just left as the cut edge.

You do have to be accurate to get the pockets to sit perfectly into the french dart.

It’s a great lunch dress, great for expanding tummies!!!

And in a knitted jacquard jersey would be a comfy wfh dress.

It’s comfy but the cut just provides enough shape to suggest curves.

I’m surprisingly pleased with this one!

Love, Lucie xx