Monday 17 August 2015

New Look 6352 Maxidress in silk charmeuse

This really is a one hour project, but it was held up for exactly a year.  Go figure!
The fabric is from emmaonesock and is a luscious silk charmeuse.
The pattern is from ebay. 
I decided to make this when I was testing maxidresses in August of last year.  I had been given fabric for my birthday and wanted to make a perfect maxidress.  I thought if the 'perfect' pattern (the Named Ama) didn't work out, I had this as a backup.  I also thought a maxidress would be the perfect way to showcase the pattern on this dramatic silk charmeuse.

The first hold up is that I sewed the shoulders together...and then my sewing machine broke.  I was just about to leave the States and I couldn't deal, so this got shoved in a corner, and then entered the Black Hole of Luggage Hell.  It's components were reunited in December, at which point it seemed like I might as well wait for my new sewing machine.  It arrived in February. The pattern calls for facings, but I saw no need for that -- naturally I planned to bias bind it with more matching silk. Luckily I have learned not to try narrow curved hems in silk anymore, but ugh, making bias tape?  Add another month just from ennui. And lots of other things to do.

Eventually I got tired of having unfinished things sitting around. Enough!  It's now my 1 month window before leaving Switzerland and I know from experience that I don't have much concentrated sewing time left.  After that I can expect challenging projects to be beyond my mindset, and fixing old things becomes completely out of the question.

Also a silk maxidress is something I might wear right now, which definitely amped my interest factor. I had expected a lot of shaping would be necessary.  I raised the shoulders about an inch and bound the neck...and realised it doesn't need any shaping actually.  I mean, it is supposed to be a pretty shapeless maxidress...so I got my groove on and finished up those french seams.  The main trouble is that after being dragged around the world the silk had shredded at any cut edge and some had to be trimmed down, but I cut about 1cm off the armholes to make them a touch deeper anyway.





In the end it is a kind of shapeless maxi dress.  Seems like a shame it took so long to get this way.  I am not sure how I feel about it.  I mean, as shapeless maxi dresses go it's great, but maybe it's just too shapeless?

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