When I was approached by TÉLIO a couple of months ago I was mostly a bit baffled. I’d never heard of the company before and wondered what they wanted to bring to the home sewing market.

After a little researching I found out TÉLIO was a huge fabric wholesaler in North America. They import and export tons of fashion fabrics all over the world, selling mostly to designers. Sounds exciting right?

So of course I jumped at the chance at collaborating and using some of their gorgeous fabric!

Their selection of fabric is massive. TÉLIO really offer everything you can think of. After staring at my computer screen for far too long, I decided to go with their embroidered bee mesh fabric(Queen Bee, style 38452, colour 01).

It ticked a lot of boxes for me – bees, embroidery, sheer. It seemed like a great opportunity to use a fabric that I just wouldn’t normally be able to find!

My idea for the dress was to make something loose and kind of pouffy that I could throw on over a slip or shorts in the summer or leggings/ tights in the winter. I also wanted to be relatively unfussy in design as I didn’t want to have to worry about lots of seams and darts that might mess up the fabric!

In the end I chose to go with the Cassiopée dress from I Am Patterns. I’ve made it once before (see it here) and I loved the easy style.

I chose to massively size down though as the dress has A LOT of ease built in. I ended up using the size smaller than I’d done previously, as well as taking a little chunk out of the centre front and back seams which helped to make the neckline smaller. I made the skirt a midi which is weirdly my favourite skirt length at the mo.

The best bit of using this fabric? No need for any seam finishing! The tulle doesn’t fray and to be honest a cleanly cut edge looks better than any finish I could have done.

I stitched down my excess seam allowances to keep things neat and I opted to bind the neckline with a satin boss binding. That was mostly to prevent anything feeling too rough in that area and I kept it as minimal as possible.

And the result?

This beauty!

I’m wearing a me-made cropped top and high waisted shorts underneath for a dressy-ish summer look. This saying that I can totally imagine it with a denim jacket and sneakers for day wear… What can I say? It’s versatile!

You can buy the bee fabric (and lots of other TÉLIO fabric) fabric.com so check them out if you’re interested in seeing what they offer.

Ooooor…

Head over to my Instagram feed and find the photo of this dress. TÉLIO have offered up 3 yards of this gorgeous embroidered tulle to give away. Be quick though cause the giveaway will only be open until Friday 22nd June!

(The giveaway is open worldwide and the gift will be sent directly from TÉLIO. Closing date is Friday 22nd June at 12 noon BST. Good luck!)