Monthly Challenges and Sewalongs…

 

…I joined The Monthly Stitch a few months ago as usual, I planned various projects, I even started the Advance blouse I had planned, for vintage month:

Of course this is still sitting on my sewing table, unmade, and partially cut.

For Frocktober, I actually finished a project, which was a dress for my daughter’s formal dance on Halloween, but when I went to write a post right on the 31st, I could not for the life of me find out how to do it. I have now found out how to post so here’s the dress.

Planning the Dress

Anyway, for my one and only Frocktober Frock, my daughter wanted a shortish dress, this was her first choice:

However, when we went to Spotlight they did not have this pattern in stock!  Very disappointed, we had another look, and I figured we could hack one out of this pattern, which had similar pleats at the front and similar lines.

She had a very definite idea of what she wanted, but the fabric was nowhere to be found, unless we went $45+ per meter.  Instead she found a gold foil coated denim??  This fabric was very hard to iron, so I did not get nice flat seams at all, and you have to be careful that you don’t melt the foil coating.  I also didn’t prewash the fabric, mainly because we didn’t know whether the foil would get ruined in the washing machine, also because we started 3 days before the formal 🙂

So this is what it turned out like:

And this is my baby in her dress, along with a few ghouls and gremlins:

Sorry about the hand signs, apparently I’m bringing up a gangster.

Making the Dress

• So I used Simplicity 4070 .
• I made a muslin or two, the first one was just the straight size 18 bust and size 20 plus a little bit hips, however it was miles too big, not sure what I do wrong when I measure, but there you go.
• So I read every book I have on pattern manipulation and settled on the Vogue sewing book.
• For muslin no. 2 I raised the bust, did a small bust correction and took the sides in, redrafted then cut out again, this time it was better, but I cut it out and hoped for the best.  Now the actual denim was a bit stiffer than the calico I used, so it didn’t go too well.
• On the actual garment, I then had to take more fabric from under the bust area, as there was too much fullness there.
• We added the belt, she didn’t want it initially, but the dress looked wrong so we went with belt, and she loved it!
• I hand sewed the hem and handpicked the zip, which I thought turned out well, I didn’t want the solid line, and the stitching seemed to fade into the fabric, so I was happy 🙂
• If I was to do this again, I’ll probably go with the 14/16 size at the muslin stage, I think I need some new tape measures.

Well that’s it, she felt beautiful, she looked beautiful, which is all that matters, so I’m one happy mum!

(None of the links in this post are paid links)