Border print

This fabric is a fabric that caught my eye, ordered it and made it up within two weeks. I made the dress for a dinner I had with friends on the occasion of my birthday. I finished it the evening before the event, which was lovely, but then the flu got hold of me. Nasty flu, been years since it got hold of me but this time it was my turn apparently. Haven’t sewn a stitch in two weeks, but now the energy is coming back. Time to show you the dress.

This border fabric was sold by panel, only 1.20 meter long. Which is not a lot to make a dress for someone with my height. It worked, though I had to cut the facings with a seam.

The pattern is based on my Suzy Furrer sloper, combined with a neckline that was inspired by New Look 6184. Thanks Viv for suggesting this neckline!

I don’t have this pattern but it was easy enough to rotate the shoulder, armhole and bust dart to these neckline darts. I left the waist darts in place, as that’s better with my figure.

Pictures from the zipper and lining. All done by machine with good result. The front and back of the dress were sewn first, leaving the shoulder seams and part of the neckline open. I love this way of construction, which I learned in Sara Alm’s class on facings.

Twist detail

Twists in garments have been around quite a while now. I believe it started with a famous Burda top in 2004 and I made my share of garments with a twist. Not very many, maybe 2 or 3. Now I did two in a row. This post is about a StyleArc pattern: the Sadie top.

This time the twist is not in the bodice but in the sleeve. A detail I immediately loved and wanted to try. I don’t know when this pattern was released, but I only noticed it a couple of weeks ago. I ordered the pdf pattern and one thing I noticed was that the front was not a complete pattern but half, to be cut on the fold. It’s been one of my little irritations that StyleArc used complete patterns when you could just as well cut the pattern piece on the fold. It saves a lot of paper and it also means less tracing/taping of the pages. Hope they do it for all patterns now. Great improvement!

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The sleeve detail is really nice. You definitely need a thin fabric with good drape for this. My fabric is a viscose (rayon) and perfect for it.

It’s a loose fitting top, can easily be worn over a pair of trousers like in the photos of me wearing it, but it’s also very good tucked in.

The pattern is labeled as medium/challenging and the sleeve isn’t for beginners. The rest of the pattern is easy.

I’ll try to illustrate my take on sewing the sleeve. Photos taken with my phone in the evening, not the best.

My first step was serging all seams, without cutting any fabric off, so that the seam allowances remained.

The hem of the sleeve must be finished till the notch on the pattern. I folded the serged hem twice and stitched it (stitching not in photo)

In the curve I used the same approach. The advantage to me was there is no clipping of seams this way, which might make for holes or fraying of fabric.

After twisting as in the illustration in the instructions it looks like this:

The seam is sewn till the twist and then it’s almost a sleeve like any other sleeve. Stitch the sleeve seam and insert in the bodice.

When you don’t do things as you advice

A while ago I wrote a post on hemming knits with a coverstitch, showing a way in which a row of basting thread helps you to stitch accurately. Definitely a method I recommend and I do it that way most of the time.  Last week though I was a bit in a hurry to finish a dress and thought I could wing it. The reason I thought this was that the fabric was very stable, with no tendency to wrinkle or distort.

Well, it didn’t happen as I hoped. Most of it went right, but there was about 20 centimeters of a loose hem.

 

For the rest it was a nice hem and I didn’t feel like undoing the stitching (do you know that feeling that when you don’t want to unpick a coverstitch hem comes out very easily, when you want to unpick it takes forever?).

A piece of hemming tape was the solution. I cut away a bit of one side to make the stitching on the tape closer to my hem.

Ironed it and my hem was done, with great stitching on the front. Nobody will be the wiser seeing this dress.

The resulting dress, Vogue 8946, which I made more than 3 years ago in a print. It was a dress I loved to wear, but had reached the end of its life cycle. For this version I lowered the neckline a tiny bit and brought the shoulders a bit more in to the neckline. I made more photos but it’s ever so difficult to get good photos of this black fabric.