So sew easy In a twist dress hack

During me made May I saw a hack of this dress on Instagram, @katrynarae. She blogs at Boots and Cats. Here is her post about this dress.  

I was immediately in love and wanted to copy it straightaway.  I didn't realise that it would require a lot of different moving parts...I read her blog post a few times and mainly got the point that I would put together the tshirt part of Plantain with this dress. Seemed easy enough.  I neglected to think about how she had a lot of trouble doing all this!

The pattern for the dress is here: https://so-sew-easy.com/twist-front-dress-pattern/

I would never have considered this pattern.  I don't like it.  The tank top cut and the length don't appeal, and the website makes me suspect you're getting a low quality product because it's full of ads.  I did have to pay money to get this pattern.  

I was not at all impressed with the pattern.  Considering that I did pay money for it, I expect a PDF to be relatively painless to put together.  A painless pdf has a marked line at the border of the pattern, showing you were each piece ends and where the overlap is.  A painful pdf has no such lines.  This pdf didn't provide any edges so I had to literally tetris edges together, cutting at the edge of the marked lines to approximate pages.  It took about 2 hours instead of 15 minutes.  I would not recommend this pattern. I now see there are knot front tutorials and I think it would be more educational and less painful to do it yourself.  

I cut a size 2 based on the size chart but sized up to a 3 on the back piece only below the waist.  This was good and matched my plantain size ok.  (I use size 36 in Deer & Doe most of the time.)  

I did possibly overthink things.  The dress had a 1/4" SA and the plantain had a 5/8" SA so I took off the tshirt SA before I overlapped them. (I'm not sure it mattered since I was using the plantain above the waist in its entirety.) I matched them at the underarm, then using only the plantain above that, as well as the shape of the plantain until it matched the dress which was halfway to the waist.  

This year I am trying harder to use fabrics I've hoarded, so out came these lemons which are precious to me.  

The instructions were ok. I think I have already stated how much I passionately hate instructions which consist of colour photographs so I don't need to dwell.  I find the knot part unsatisfying because it leaves a lot of edges raw.  There's a triangle to the right of the knot which, when I wear it, makes me feel like I have a belly pooch.  Overall the dress is really interesting, it's longer than I usually wear, fits perfectly well, and looks good.  I also went ahead and used my new and terrifying coverseamer on the sleeves and hems so although they are not perfect, they are STRETCHY!!

Droopy triangle visible on the left here

The result: might take a full summer of wear to get a verdict but I'm glad I made this and I will probably never do it again.  Not everything deserves a muslin.  Also I was reminded how awesome the Plantain is and how I should do frankendresses more often. 

Lady Renfrew/Skater-frew Frankendress

This fabric is from the market in Delft and it's consistently been in the wrong country while I dreamed about what to make with it.  The one thing I wanted was the stripes going down sleeves. For awhile I thought of doing a Named Geneva tee, but I made a bunch of them and was kind of tired of them so I lost interest and this kind of rayon - lightweight, but heavy, jersey, cool feeling - doesn't suit everything because it stretches so much.

Finally I decided to do a Lady Skater Renfrew frankendress. This has been done loads, but the most memorable to me is Lauren's.  It's the first time I used the cowl neck.  In order to combine the patterns, I applied all the neck stuff from the Renfrew onto the skater pattern.  They don't have the same seam allowances, but I honestly think I could have put the Renfrew cowl on the skater with no other changes, and it would not have looked much different.

Renfrew size 4.  Skater size 3.  It's my third skater with a third type of fabric and the same size, and it's interesting to me how each one is very different.  (Versions 1 and 2.) I thought I had way enough fabric with my two plus meters...so I was going crazy picking pieces of pattern...and then I got to the cowl.  The massive, fabric needy cowl.  Oops.  So I found a scrap of pale jersey to be the underside - I guess it's visible sometimes but luckily it matches really well and maybe it's kind of nice to break up the pattern a little bit.

I got worried halfway in that this fabric is too heavy to be a skater.  I didn't add the elastic at the waist because it is scratchy and I don't really understand how elastic in the seam allowance stabilizes the dress, anyway.  But.  Is this kind of dress doomed to drag downwards and fall apart?  How to avoid?  After wearing for one day I can see the stitches at the waist pulling. Does the elastic stop that from happening?

I don't know how much I like it.  I think it's cute but I kind of lost interest at some point.  I'm getting into moving phase again and I want to make make make (because travelling with fabric is heavy) but I don't really want to keep keep keep...

Ondee Skater Frankendress

I debated what to do with this beautiful fabric for quite awhile.  It is a batik terry cloth from emmaonesock.

Finally I decided to start by making an Ondee, and then making something else with the leftovers.
The repeat is a square with the blue border and I wasn't sure how to approach it.  I went for centering the pattern and placing the strips in a visually neat place (and the bindings) and I adore it.  I made a size 38, and as my previous Ondee, it was a very easy pattern with no news to report.

But...my caveat is that the waist is really tight and I was feeling like Houdini getting in and out of it.  Also, I wanted to make a skater with the rest of this fabric...and I didn't have enough.  So I decided it was time for my first Frankendress...an Ondee-skater.

I didn't have enough fabric to really plan how I laid out the skirt, but once I got the two attached they matched up perfectly...except for having the pattern in the middle driving me crazy!

I switched the front and back panels, which helped a bit.  The dress is cozy, and it's stretchy, and it's roomy - either because the Ondee was a bit wider than the skirt panels, or because of the multiple times that I ripped out the waist stitching.  The lightning bolt waist stitching.  Grrr...

So it's a bit more roomy than I'm used to.  I love the pattern, I love the fabric, but I can't quite escape that the Ondee was a better match for it in some ways.  The dress is comfortable to wear but everyone else likes it more than I do!  Not sure whether I'll keep it.