Are Marfy Patterns Worth The Money?

Yes, they probably are, but let me tell you about what’s highjacked my life and why I’m late posting this pattern review!

No, not the World Cup, although that hasn’t helped!

Nightingales! Little birds with beautiful voices and cute, fluffy, stubby-tailed babies. They’ve been nesting under the carport roof in our garden and they’ve driven me to distraction!

Last year a neighbour’s cat got the baby birds before they’d had a chance to stretch their fledgling wings and it broke my heart, so this year I’ve been on a mission to save them!

Call me a crazy over-protective mother but I can’t sit back and watch these tireless birdy parents fight for their young’s lives and not join in. It takes a village to raise a child as they say! As soon as the birds start chirping the predator alarm (you get to recognise this pretty quickly!), I’m out there, shooing attackers away.

After using the garden as a photo studio and now running out at all times of the day, chasing away their cats – sometimes in my nightclothes! – I’m sure my elderly neighbours think I’ve lost the plot completely!

It’s been full-on and it’s completely derailed my blog posting schedule, but there you have it. Apparently, I’ve had more important things to do! A higher calling of nature you could say. A struggle for survival I couldn’t ignore!

Anyway, on with the pattern review. This Marfy 3107 dress was made soon after the nightingales hatched! It’s one of the free patterns:-

– from the Marfy 2013/14 pattern catalogue.

Marfy is a high fashion Italian pattern company. Their patterns don’t come with sewing explanations or photos apart from some scant sewing notes on the pattern itself in Italian, English, French and Spanish. You piece the patterns together by matching the letters marked on each pattern piece (ie. A to A, B to B, etc..).

I bought the catalogue in Italy last year for 18 euros. It includes a pattern sheet with eight patterns in five sizes. You can also buy it online from www.marfy.it but with the cheapest postage option, it’d be thirty three euros to send to Germany.

Expensive? Yes but the catalogue comes with eight free patterns and this year’s catalogue has 20 free patterns, which makes the price per pattern reasonable I think.

This Marfy 3107 dress pattern is my first foray into the world of Marfy and I have to admit so far, I’m impressed! 

The quality of the pattern is good. Essentially this dress is two squares sewn together but the devil is in the details and I was pleasantly surprised at how nicely it fits.

The shaping comes from the line of stitching running down the middle of the two main pattern pieces and the under the bust tie.

There are only two seams to sew in this dress – the front seam and the back shaping seam. I sewed these and then hemmed all around and then did the under-bust casing for the tie front and then the straps. I would suggest leaving the back seam to the end or maybe temporarily sewing it and then sew it up when you’ve tried the dress on and checked the fit because this seam gives the dress its shape, together with the bust darts and affects the whole look of the dress.

This was a relatively fast make although I chose to finish my seams with French seams because my cotton is so fine and hemming the narrow hem was time-consuming.

My one criticism of this dress on my body, is that it’s very low at the front and obviously designed for a more voluptuous figure than mine! I can just about get away from it with a vest underneath but I probably won’t make this style again. It has peaked my interest to try the other free patterns in the Marfy catalogue though. I’ve got my sights set on the cape 3210 – maybe for autumn.

Also I’m claiming an Oona-twist to this dress so I’m putting it forward for the Oonapalooza challenge! See www.oonaballoona.com for more details.

Have you tried Marfy patterns? How’d you find them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Enjoy the weekend,

Christine