My Keeper Teddy dress in my favourite scraps

Things have been going so well recently, time for some new patterns and drama!  (Not entirely, but my scrap stash is all over the floor to plan this dress and got annoying so it became a priority.)  I am using some really precious stash for this dress with the hope that the side ties make it a relatively forgiving fit.  It's not a look I would want a bunch of.

I started in with the strong opinions pretty early with this one. 

The pattern is put shortwise on the A0s so each pattern piece has to be taped together in the middle.  The third page of the A0 was nearly blank.  Huge waste of paper.  And as I cut I realised...this is a pattern finished with bias tape, and there is no bias tape pattern piece.  A pet peeve of mine.  We are not really off to a good start.  I decided that I'm tired of my gross non folded bias pieces and dug into my stash for some good old vintage polyester bias tape.  Once I did that I realised I still had to make side ties, and I ended up pulling out my bias tape maker, and using that to fold up the ties, which was very fun.  Maybe I do like making bias tape after all...

size straight 8, shortened 1" at the waist shorten line and planned a deeper hem for the remaining 2 cm that need to come off.  

The neck has two cut options but weirdly the seam allowance line that goes all along the pattern vanishes at the lower neck line, leaving me to wonder if I need to add a seam allowance there or what.  I ended up cutting 1cm above that line as it really looks like that's the continuation of the SA.  

The side tie marks don't line up.  I thought maybe that was strategic, placing them where they will pull the dress just right.  I don't know.  

Sewing this was easy.  However, this is one of those very homemade, beginner type patterns that will not look very good unless you are an experienced sewist who can trouble shoot ahead of time.  Back zip, with bias taping.  No advice at all in the instructions for creating a decent finish.  I taped over the top of my zip and then did a little tuck and fold with the inside of my bias tape to keep it relatively neat.

 

 

Finally it does fit but it's skin tight. The designer mentions that it's a snug fit, but what I didn't realise was that it's a REALLY snug fit.   Seems like you should have ease in the sides so that you can actually pull the side ties in and do something shapey with them, but in my case they have to be as loose as possible or I can't get the dress on.  This means that the ties...are useless.  The ties are also extremely long, meant to be as long as the entire dress, I suppose.  You could just use one tie on each side instead of two if you didn't want that effect (or no ties! Since they aren't doing anything!)  The armscye is too tight on me, of course - I tried it on and thought it would be ok but somewhere in there it seems like it just got tighter. I didn't cut any additional depth. 

So, there are things I would do differently if I made this again - size up (length was good), deepen the armscye and probably create a partial facing to help clean up the finishing.  I will, however, never make this again.  I find it kind of nauseating as a style on me, too cutesy somehow.  I do see how the full length panels are quite flattering, but it doesn't inspire me.  I am trying to pawn it off on friends, but it hasn't found a home yet. 

 

Wide Strap Maxi Dress revisited: Peppermint x Elbe textiles

 

I made this dress in some lovely lemon fabric a few years ago and my big comment was to use a nice floaty fabric that draped well if I did it again.  That first version suffered because the elastic was too tight.  I put a lot of effort into getting the straps to sit well and the elastic just right but I overdid it and the tight elastic bothered me.  I thought ended up with the straps too short - the bust darts were a ways above my bust.  I think a looser look matches the silhouetter better - he dress rather should loosely skim rather than grabbing around the chest and then it will billow out less over the bum.

So despite my fabric thoughts, at some point I decided to make it again using a beautiful scrap of waxed cotton.  The, you know, least drapey fabric.  I was really cheated when I bought this most beautiful piece - I paid for a meter and I think it's 80 cm x 80 cm.  I needed a dress that would be a full length canvas for it.  The Tessuti Claudia dress (which I literally have printed out but have never sewn) would have been a great choice...but I have some weird aversion to making it. Every time I look at the pattern I think oooh!  I would love that!  So I am not sure why it never makes the cut. 

I needed a fabric for the back.  Some thought here, went for a dark navy linen, but something about it was not quite right - it was really quite heavy.  After awhile I went shopping again and this time got a linen/viscose, a bit lighter weight, and matching the deepest navy parts of the design.  

Sewing the dress is very fun, it's one of those patterns that come together with satisfying neat angles.  Yet again I put a lot of time into getting the elastic at the back to be just right and the straps just right.  I have very sloping shoulders which are not symmetrical, so these wide straps need to be separately angled and sewn in.  

I think the dress is so pretty and the pockets of course are amazing.  I wore it to a wine festival and got lots of compliments, but I noticed right away that the right side strap is way too loose- I haven't quite got the angle right.  This is fixable, and probably expected considering my shoulders.  It is annoying enough that I'll put the time into fixing it.  Unlike last time I think I left the entire length of the straps inside the lining so I could adjust as needed, but I also didn't need to cut much off to make them fit - suggesting they are about 2" longer this time.  

Overall a relative success (I have NOT done the fix yet) but a bit tricky to get a perfect fit as I really need the straps just right or I get very annoyed.  I'm looking at these photos and suddenly realised I should cross the straps across the back.  Not at all bra friendly but it would solve my problems! 

 

Roberts Wood Flower Patchwork dress, a Frocktails adventure

 I have been wildly in love with this pattern since it came out. 

But in love like unrequited love.

There was the first big hump: what fabric could cope with so many unfinished edges?  I spent a year mulling this over.  I reckoned it had to be silk, maybe organza.  Something with body, so the flower petals would stick out.  The pattern consists of 3 separate sets of flowers, so you can use 3 different fabrics and you won't end up with the same fabric next to itself - or of course you can just use one fabric, or two. 

I got too curious and bought the pattern and had to recover from that for another year.  Both the financial hit, and the 5 tightly rolled up A0 pages with nothing on them but...flowers.  Hundreds of flowers.  The size is built into the pattern- and I was confident with the smallest size as it coincides neatly with my measurements.  The dress is a bit oversized, but I wouldn't have wanted it smaller, the neck hole fits just right.  It feels quite substantial around me I think that's because of the three-dimensional-ness of it. 

I bought three colours of silk organza and stuck it at the bottom of my stash.  I moved house a few times (always a good reason to procrastinate.)  I changed jobs and didn't get to sew enough...

And then moved to Auckland, a city with a Frocktails!  I put this dress on my Make 12 list for the year, deadline: Frocktails in early September.  I also reorganised my stash and thought actually the cranberry red dupioni silk, previously purchased for something else, might be a perfect fit for this.  The organza idea just didn't feel right.  Months passed and trips came and went and suddenly I actually only had two weeks until Frocktails.  

I spent two days cutting out paper flowers while my partner watched.  This improved when I realised I had an audiobook to attend to.  I thought I would stick the flowers onto the silk, cut roughly around them and then cut more precisely one by one.  To make this possible I bought the sharpest little embroidery scissors in Spotlight, a new micro-olfa cutter, and a small pink cutting mat, plus three spools of matching thread, and I hijacked the kitchen table.  

This phase took another 2 days.  And catastrophe then struck: a pile of flowers were neglected on the sewing room table...a RANDOM cross section of flowers from the three different colour ways.  And I had run out of fabric.  An emergency trip to The Fabric Store - a very lucky grab at a bolt of red dupioni silk - the last of the dupioni in stock - and an early morning trip to the laundromat later whew, all the flowers are accounted for, and hopefully the different shade of red will add texture.  Four days to go. 

I quickly realised it was better to pin the flowers to the silk for the rough cutting phase.  I just needed to get them into a pile of flowers, it didn't matter if they were a bit askew on their individual fabric pieces.  An unexpected participant joined the fun: Paivi LOVED all the excitement happening in her personal playground and joined the sweatshop with enthusiasm.  She particularly liked all the sharp objects, and unpinned bits of paper...

Cutting the flowers out on my new surgical desk: 2 days. 

I now had 2 days to sew the dress, plus the day of Frocktails which was after night shift so I could do some sewing, but nothing too strenuous.  It ended up being the bindings, done on the day from that original organza.  Organza is a terrible thing to cut and also to sew on the bias and was a horrible choice to use for bindings, so if you look closely, they are a bit messy.  

The insides! There are many micro holes at the corners where my sewing lines weren't perfect, but you can't see any of this in the dress when worn.

 

I showed up at frocktails slightly glassy eyed post night shift, and with a few faint chalk marks here and there on my dress - but DONE!  and it was a perfect way to celebrate a project that ran my life for about two weeks, while also being a kind of sanity-saver and distraction from some simultaneous health drama.  To give you some scale: I consumed 4 audiobooks during the simple parts of cutting these flowers out. 

And you know, I would do it again.  I would actually use fabric scraps and just not worry about the fraying edges and make a wildly ridiculous patchwork version of this dress.  Also, it has heaps of room and needs pockets.  I was absolutely not going there this time around but I see no reason to skip it on a future attempt.   

Vikisews Leora dress - my first vikisews encounter

I have actually moved on to making things that are more winter-appropriate.  But I bought two vikisews patterns and I wanted to at least sew one of them this year.  The Oona was planned, but I didn't have enough fabric.  So I moved on to sew the Leora.  

I would never have looked twice at this from the model photos.  It was an instagram picture from @maisewdelic that got me - cropping the dress, the sleeves, and putting the tie only through the channels rather than up and around your neck.  NOW I was sold.  

I dove into the weird world of Vikisews fit.  I got the size 36, height 162-165 cm. Because of that I made no additional pattern modifications, assuming that the petite fit would be allocated just as I need (hmmmm).  Cropped the sleeves randomly halfway down.  Removed 45 cm of the skirt. And cut the tie half as long as required.  

The instructions were really cool once I got over the question of what knit bias tape is.  I used strips of an old tshirt because it seemed more stable than the rayon of my main fabric and I had it handy.  I love the finish that provides, actually.  Creating the channel was very cool.  Overall this was a super fun one day project.  

Finally get to try it on. Hm, interesting. 

Now, this fabric is from Tessuti, it's another stash special fabric, and yet again there's me splashing out on an untried pattern.  The fit of this is good (does anyone like looking down at your own belly?  But I think it's not really something another person can see) except oddly the right shoulder. The left is a little bit better for some reason.  The right seems like the sleeve was put in wrong, though it wasn't.  I need to try to just overlock off the top curve of the shoulder - actually this is where a sloping shoulder adjustment would have saved me, enough that I might consider just doing it on everything in future. There's a huge amount, maybe 1" of dead space at the top of that shoulder, and this is quite a wide chested cut, so that's important to keep the top from falling off. I would have done it right away but I changed my overlocker thread and my overlocker is broken so changing thread is currently a bit dramatic.  Alternately, that fit is due to me also being short across the upper chest.  I've never shortened a pattern at that level, but the straps on tank tops are often too long, and I've often noticed taking a wedge out from the front horizontally above the bust would have helped things fit better - unfortunately this isn't a fix you can do once you have sewn a garment together, so I rarely consider it. 

Sorry about the particularly bad photos.  My usual outdoor location was blocked by a car and I got really frustrated with my camera's autofocus. 

Aside from the right shoulder, the fit is great.  It looks nothing like on the model.  Because I'm so short waisted (I presume that's why), the skirt comes up past my belly button and the ruching lies over it - no hole!  Very demure. I had the exact same fit on the Papercut Axis dress.  Possibly if I did do the tie over my head I could change where the ruching lay but I will never do that because I think it is hideous.  I'm fascinated by how consistent this is - I have a couple more front-hole dresses to try next year and I wonder if I will continue to find that they sit very differently on me due to my short waistedness (or some other reason?) 

This counts as a win. It's cute and wearable and actually very flattering.  (I got around to fixing that shoulder as planned, and it's better.)  I would love some Fasanella style analysis on why my fit is so different from the expected fit though!