Simplicity New Look 6429 & Orla Kiely stems

Well here we are, I did promise that I would do this again.  Here's version 1.

After I made version 1, I put in a heap of effort.  I actually shortened the pattern by an unknown amount, between 4-8 inches, at the midsection, redrafting the darts slightly to accommodate the changes.  I cut out this nice Orla Kiely fabric including a yoke that wouldn't be too busy. And then I boxed it all up for 2 years.

It's still a size 10 and it took a day or so to do. I can comment that it's a lot easier to handle single layer quilting cotton dresses now that I have an overlocker. Seams are controlled, there's no question of how to best finish things, and it all looks neat inside!

I'm the same size I was 2 years ago, but not quite in the same way.  (Looking at those old pictures I think they look surprisingly good!) But lest I get too sad about that - I was taking these pictures in my front yard and my elderly neighbors came out while I was wearing this dress, to tell me how good I looked. And yet again I think it looks more ok in pictures than I feel in it.

My end thoughts are that my style has changed too much. This feels just a bit too small everywhere. The poochy fabric-belly that was there before, is still there.  Maybe widening the entire dress would have been wiser than shortening it?  I think the stems are annoying because although my pattern matching was quite good, it's not perfect.  I just can't wear a dress like this, a cute, fitted, quilting cotton type number - and I'm not actually sure I ever really wanted to.  My friend Tessa has agreed to dispose of it, either on her daughter or on some hapless friends with kids. Yay!  

Simplicity New Look 6429 and Japanese gardens

I cut this pattern out in size 10 mainly because my pattern didn't go smaller. Thank god I did!  It's true that big 4 size patterns aren't always true to the envelope, which puts me a size 12, but lately I'm in the habit of sizing way down because I've been making a lot of knits. That really doesn't turn out well with wovens. 

The fabric is from a little shop I found in Hilo, Hawaii.  I was in love with this shop, which had mainly Japanese prints, and I couldn't resist buying a few.  This dress was part of a dress project I started although I had to give up halfway down the list because I ran out of time before moving...(again.)

This pattern seems to have really good reviews. In order to test it to the max, I went with a version that had sleeves, view A.  It is so hard to fit my shoulders, and the idea of the dress project was to find some patterns that really had hope, that might need multiple muslins/attempts but that will end up being building blocks for the future.

The pattern is straightforward.  In this version, the yoke is interfaced, and the inside of the yoke seam allowance is ironed out of sight before topstitching.  It is easy to have a clean finish, and I could have done entirely french seams, although I didn't because I thought of it as a bit of a muslin.

 I hesitated after putting the yoke on the dress, thinking that the pattern placement was hideous, and overall I had to leave this dress as a UFO while I debated what to do.  At that point I could see that the fit was surprisingly good, and I thought maybe I needed a different fabric yoke.  However, it's hard to match quilting cotton with anything else, so eventually I gave up and decided the pattern placement, while not optimal, wasn't terrible.

My final estimation is that this dress fits me perfectly from the waist up.  And while inspecting it I realised that the bottom of the dress fits great too.  It's the middle 7 cm that I don't need.  So I realised that this in fact is a perfect dress for me to work on - by removing 7 cm from the middle, on a pattern that has no lengthen-shorten lines, and that has a french dart in the middle of the to-be-removed section.

I think this pattern would fit perfectly on someone who is long waisted.  And I am still pretty blown away at how well it fits me above the waist. I think the pictures don't quite show how much the middle is wrinked due to being totally extraneous.

I planned a second version right away and was really hoping to do it too!  But I had to box it up as it got close to moving time.  This pattern is one I'll return to. 

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?