Just in time for spring?

While it's still cold and the S word still appears in the weather forecast with depressing regularity, The Sewing Lawyer has made a dress in a very spring-y colour and it has short (actually cap) sleeves.

I hear it looks good with 2 accordions...

The detail is a bit hard to photograph in late afternoon.

But the seams are really lovely, if I do say so myself.

I plunged ahead with this project without making a muslin.  I never used to make muslins and now I feel a bit nervous if I skip this step.  But I've learned that Burda patterns are very reliable both in terms of fit and in delivering exactly the garment illustrated. Many's the time I've made a muslin only to realize ... huh, no adjustments required!

The fit is not 100% perfect but definitely good enough. Only the back waist is a bit sloppy on me.

This was a fun sew, technically speaking (all those curved seams!) that took me out of my comfort zone, style-wise.  I waffled on whether to make the flounce or godet or whatever it is, or leave it off, whether to do the hi-low hem or level the whole thing.  In the end I took a deep breath and made it more or less as BurdaStyle intended.  The back is not as interesting as the front, and the hi-lo hem only looks good from the front (in my opinion) but I like it well enough.

Lining - power 

The fabric is wool crepe with lots of lycra; very unusual (stash, origins lost in time, it came to me via the Fabric Flea Market many years ago). The dress is supposed to be lined to the hip only but that made no sense to me.  I puzzled over what to use for lining given the stretch, and came up with more power stretch.  Why not?  I still have lots.  I cut the power stretch to the hip and used the lower dress pieces to make a lower lining from Bemberg.

Sleeve opening/side seam

The finished dress is super comfortable.  I really like the cap sleeves.  The seams come together below the arm in a really interesting way. There is enough room so the sleeves don't bind, but they don't wing out either. Very nicely drafted!

The only sewing change I made was to make the neck opening a tiny bit less deep than Burda wanted - I just sewed a smaller seam allowance at the bottom of the neckline.  I made a facing-shaped piece for the front and back neck, and stabilized the neckline with a light fusible interfacing to limit the potential for a stretched out opening.

My other little sewing secret in this dress is that I didn't sew the hem - I fused it!  I have miles of this fusible web tape that doesn't seem to change the hand of the fabric you fuse it to, holds very securely, and doesn't inhibit stretch.  I have no idea what it is - something like Stitch Witchery I think.

I thought, when I started this project, that the dress would look great with my new jacket.  As it turns out, however, I don't think they look all that wonderful together even though the blue of the dress is close to the blue in the Prada wool fabric.  The colour of the dress just makes the grey suiting look dingy.

So I went exploring in my closet, and found this jacket that I made many years ago - almost 10 years ago, to be exact (Vogue 2865, long OOP).  It has been a bit of an orphan recently but the fabric (a really interesting multi-coloured and loosely woven wool bouclé) is so lovely that I wouldn't dream of getting rid of it, and it looks pretty darned good with my new dress, if I do say so myself.

I wonder what I should make next?