Sinclair Fiesta Ruched Bust Dress and Top

Today Sinclair Patterns released a new pattern, the Fiesta ruched bust knit top and dress. It’s a perfect pattern to wrap up the spring and be prepared for summer. I made two copies of it during test and here I’m sharing my experience and opinion about the pattern.

Pattern design

The pattern is fitted around the shoulders, bust and waist. It comes with a half circle peplum or skirt with the pleat at teh center front. The bodice features a V neckline and a ruching at the center. It’s achieved by using a piece of elastic and you can control how deep the V neck is by adjusting its length. The bodice is lined in the front, making it a very practical piece.

The Fiesta pattern also comes with multiple sleeve options. You can make it sleeveless, long, short, or 3/4 sleeves, and with a flutter sleeves. Being a Sinclair dress pattern it’s also compatible with their add-ons, including the flared sleeves, the puffed sleeves, and with some tweeks, the flared skirt add-ons. I will explain how to make it work with the skirt add-ons later.

Fabric choice

The pattern is for knit fabrics. It asked for some vertical stretch too because of the neckline binding. This means if your main fabric doesn’t have vertical stretch, it’s fine. You may need to go up a size, or simply use a different 4-way stretch fabric to make the neck binding. That’s what I did in both pieces.

Construction tips

Fiesta is easy to make. It took me about 5 hours in total from cutting to finish with the red version with two add-ons. The center elastic can be tricky because you need to stretch it a lot. But there’s a much easier way if you have a elastic pressure foot with your serger. You apply some force, and just serge. After that you try to match the lining piece to ensure the center is roughly the same length.

Besides the ruched bust, the other parts are standard. It’s easy to make

If you want to use the sleeve add-ons or skirt add-ons, you can certainly do that. The sleeves can just interchange as they are. They match perfectly. You just need to note down the front and back of the sleeves, because you can’t rely on the notch to match that of the body.

The ruched center will raise the skirt a little bit, so there may be an issue if you directly use the skirt add-on. I picked the hi-lo flared skirt with flounce so the raise in the front doesn’t matter. Otherwise you want to to do a longer front to balance the front end back pieces. You can also use the old method to hang your skirt overnight and then just cut the skirt hem so it’s leveled.

In the red dress version, I used the flared skirt add-on, and also the puffed sleeves add-on. I didn’t en-long the body piece. So it’s still relavetily easy to make. I really like the final result. I think the ruched bust matches very well with the hi-lo skirt with flounce!

Summary

I haven’t made a top out of Fiesta yet because I feel our summer can be here anyday. But this is really a practical pattern to make various tops and dresses. They look fancy, yet it’s not hard to make at all. You don’t even cut more pieces, just one more piece than normal. Especially when there’s a promotion (like now until 26th April), it’s such a great deal to pay only $7.99 and get a top, a dress of two length, with 5 sleeve options!