Tessuti patterns Sadie slip dress

This pattern has been on my to-do list for so many years it's embarrassing. 
I've had time to basically internalise details from other people's makes from 10 years ago when they were blogging!  I also had time to lose the instructions.  Oops.  Luckily I was able to get a copy of the instructions from a sewing friend. 

I made the smallest size and I did add the darts, but the dress is pretty loose and I don't think the darts have affected it much. 

After planning many theoretical versions of this I went with the safest method - a leftover scrap of viscose.  It's black with cute starships on it.  Not the easiest to work with, it's a bit shifty, but has good texture and weight.  This was the leftover piece after making a skirt so I just made the dress as long as the fabric allowed.  I knew that full length would be too long for me. I also knew that I would hate the facings, but I did them anyway.  I was not able to actually cut straight enough pieces to do anything like rouleaux straps, or straps I could pull a safety pin through, so I just folded a long strip in 4 and sewed it down.  I don't think this is as nice, as straps go, and was a bit low effort on my part.  Optimally I should have interfaced some of the fabric and then cut straps from it.  But I wasn't trying too hard. 

 

 

This was an easy sew.  I did my best to tack the facings down anywhere I could, I also cut the facing a bit smaller, and they still peek out somewhat.  I do still hate them.  The front of the dress is also very low cut and only hides lower cut bras.  I'm holding out on whether I will wear this dress this summer, because my dream version was two layers of yellow silk (so no facings needed) but aside from that particular vision I don't think this has a very interesting shape or any other reason I would particularly reach for it.  I would prefer a slip dress that just has bias binding from the start.  In fact I'm not sure why I don't just stick with the Orchard slip dress which fit great and was very simple, as well as being a free pattern!  I do want something bias cut though, so I might try the Gibbons by Elbe textiles next.  

 

I love this fabric so kind of sad I don't really like the dress!  But it comes from The Fabric Shop in Otara so I might actually try to get more.   

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! 

i am Cassiopee, not for the first time

 I finally made this pattern with the recommended fabric. 

Here are the previous iterations in orla kiely and ice dyed fabric.  Size 36.

Rayon that's been in my stash with this fantastic print. I got it at Tessuti Fabrics when I was buying something else. The colour scheme isn't my usual and I thought it would be nice for a change.  

I shortened the dress a few inches, I shortened the sleeves to below the raglan attachment, enough that I thought it wouldn't gape when I raised my arms. 

I always sew down the facings but you know, I never thought about how I could make it a skinnier facing and sew it down closer to the edge.  I thought about that too late and didn't do it.

Pockets harvested from something else on my floor.  

It's really such an easy sew, there's not much to say.

 

 

I wore it that night to dinner.  I am finally happy with this pattern.  A fabric with no body is best suited to this very wide dress.  I see there's a new jersey option, which would be interesting.  It's so wide that I feel like you would need to narrow it to make a nice jersey dress though.  All the online pictures don't make it look as wide as I felt in my previous iterations!