With the new year approaching, you might be thinking about next year's wardrobe - what fabrics will be fashionable? What items of clothing will be essential and stylish? What dressmaking fabrics should you use and wear? One item of clothing that never seems to go out of fashion is the well-loved maxi dress - these dresses can be worn for any occasion, from casual to formal, and they look fantastic in practically any colour or pattern. In today's blog, we'll be walking you through how to make your very own maxi dress using our dressmaking fabrics, ready for spring and summer next year. What You'll Need - 2.5 metres of 150cm wide dressmaking fabric (we recommend fabrics such as our bamboo jersey, viscose jersey and lycra jersey) - A cotton reel to match your fabric - 1 metre of 1/2" elastic - A safety pin Step One Cut a strip of fabric about 0.5 wide by 1.5 metres wide. This will be the part that goes around your bust, so sew the short edges together to make a tube of fabric. Measure this around your bust and take your tube in as much as you need to, then cut off the excess when you are done. Adjust the width of the tube as well if you desire. Don't hem either side yet. Step Two Take the remainder of your fabric (you should have 2 metres left) and sew the shorter edges together to make another tube of fabric. Don't hem either side yet. Step Three You will need to gather one end of your tube down to about a metre long. You can do this using a gathering stitch on your sewing machine. Step Four Once you have gathered one edge of your bigger tube, sew the gathered edge to one edge of the smaller tube that you made earlier. Step Five Take your dress and fold the top edge of it in towards the inside once by about an inch. Sew this down and leave a small gap to thread your elastic into. Take your elastic and attach your safety pin to one end, then use the safety pin to thread the elastic through the gap and through the small tube that you just sewed (make sure to secure the second end of your elastic to something so that it does not disappear into the tube!). Once you have threaded your elastic all the way around your dress, sew the two ends of the elastic together and let them sit inside the tube. Finish your seam by sewing up the small gap that you left earlier. Step Six Try your dress on and mark where you want the length of it to end. Cut the excess off, then hem the edge. Your maxi dress is now finished! If you like, you can add optional extras such as straps (either for function or decoration) and light embellishments - we do not recommend anything heavy, as this would distort the flow of the fabric in your dress, but if a little bit of sparkle is your style, a few acrylic jewels here and there won't have any negative effect. Have you ever made a maxi dress using any of our dressmaking fabrics? Take a photograph and upload it to our Facebook page - we love seeing what our customers come up with!