Big floral print

I know, this is unheard of!  A second post so soon?  And about a sewing project?  All I can say is that Vogue 1250 continues to dole out the instant gratification.

I've complained before about cheap-n-cheerful rayon/lycra knit prints, but continue to get sucked into buying them if the price point and print are cheerful enough.  So I found this one at my Fabricland recently.  I am a total sucker for shades of blue-grey, teal and orange.

Feet shown for scale

If you recall from my discussion of Vogue 1250 when it first came out, two years ago (I made it twice), this dress has only three pattern pieces, and one of them is a tiny strip to face the back neck.  With a print this big, I had a choice:

Put big orange flowers right in the centre of my chest and on my skirt below crotch level (shown at left).

Or have a mainly blue-grey front, with big orange flowers at the side and back.  My very sensible choice to avoid big orange splotches on my front meant I got them on my behind!

The front, on the other hand, is very subdued except for the flower which ended up right at my belly button level!

I like it anyway.

And it goes with my recently completed Featherweight cardigan.

In making this dress, I cursed and swore at my coverstitch machine (which I haven't used enough to get very comfortable with) until discovering what most of you already know - it does so much better if you stick the hem down with Steam-a-seam.  I wonder if I can buy shares in the company that makes it?

Before cutting into my fabric today, I had it in mind to alter the dress so that the cowl was less indecently low.  However, in comparing the pattern to my second version of V1250, I realized that the problem is just that the dress has stretched tremendously in its two years of life.  At right I've lined up the back piece at the shoulder.  The pink line is where the seam should be.  The black line is where the seam on my older dress has sagged to.  I thought that knit was a little better quality, but no.  Sigh.

This knit dress is destined to be fast fashion in every sense of the word.

Betcha can't make just ONE

Vogue 1250 comes in pairs.  Like everyone else, I could not quite stop at one.

I whipped this up today out of (as you can see) an outrageously large print.  It seemed perfect for a pattern with hardly any seams.

I stared at the print for a while before concluding it would not be useful to try to actually plan for any part of it to fall anywhere in particular.  And then I blithely folded the fabric and cut the big piece, not particularly paying attention to the print.

Oh serendipity!  Look at how the cowl is nestled in a V in the print!  Somehow my shoulders are both more or less red, and I think that the large motifs worked out well in the front.

Of course, I blithely cut out the big piece, without checking to see if I had a sufficiently big bit left for the smaller piece (upper back).  Um. No.

It has a CB seam, unlike the DKNY original.

At least I was able to more or less match the two halves through the large motif in the centre.

The CB seam in the skirt *almost* matches.  I take no credit.  The width of the dress is what it is.  Actually, I don't much care for how the print falls on my backside, but I don't really have to look at it, so I don't much care...

And I am really happy with how the print falls in the front.

Here is one more tidbit of information about this pattern.



As you can see in the picture above, the original has this rather low V under the arm.  It seemed unnecessary.  So in my new version, I filled it in a bit.  Below is my altered pattern piece.  The front did not get altered at all.  It's basically a smooth curved line from shoulder to waist.  The effect of this extra little wedge of fabric is just that the back attaches higher up.  It also pulls the shoulder down slightly to form more of a cap sleeve, which I like.




The other small change I made was to increase the depth of the cut-on facing for the cowl.  I felt it was at risk of flipping out as originally planned (a depth of about 7.5cm).  I added approximately double that again at CF, tapering to nothing where the facing attaches to the shoulder seam.


Simple.

Hot weather sewing

I was making great progress with Vogue 8718 until I realized that our newly-installed central AC was not functioning as planned, and it is a hot weekend.  Erg.

The jacket needed a lot of steam.  So I switched gears.  Today, I made Vogue 1250 - the DKNY cowl neck dress everyone has been raving about.  There are already 17 reviews on PR and it has only been in the book for a month or so.  I can see why it's popular.  Three pattern pieces, and one of them is a little strip to finish the back neck.  This is, as I proved today, a dress that you can make in an afternoon.

However, its design makes it a bit tricky for someone, like The Sewing Lawyer, whose top and bottom are not the same size.  (FYI, the top is a pretty straight size 10 and the bottom is just a titch under size 16.)

This dress is snug at the hip, designed with about 3cm ease, just over 1".  And the skirt is a single piece with only one seam at CB.  Darts extend to hip level from the bodice side seam to provide shaping.  To the right is the schematic drawing of the pattern pieces.  I puzzled over how to add width  at the hip without completely changing the design (i.e. by adding a side seam).  My solution was to slice the pattern vertically through the hip dart, adding a 2cm wide strip.  This worked very well, I'm happy to report. Except that I don't actually think I have as much as 3cm ease.  Hmmm.  

My fabric is a mystery content, striped slinky-like fabric I picked up at Vogue Fabrics in Chicago (I do love the way that sounds :D).  I had purchased a generous amount for a top, which turned out to be the right amount for this dress, 1.2 metres.  It only needs one length, at least in my size range.

To ensure the stripes would match, I cut one side of the front, single layer, pinned through the CF line, then folded to match the stripes before cutting the second side.  At the point of cutting, I wasn't certain I would need all the 4cm I had added so had not yet cut out the hip dart.  I did need it.  All of it.

I sewed the dress using a tiny zig zag on my regular sewing machine (1.5 x 1.5 mm) which is narrow enough to press open, strong and stretchy.

So here's the finished dress.  It looks pretty drab, but has some nice blues and cream colours in the stripes.

I was worried that the knit might stretch and the dress grow, but it seems firmer once made than I expected.

The cowl is low, but not indecent.

The back.  Kind of plain.

Where's my spanx?