Cosy Dress: Vogue 1338

Here's my latest completed project - a new Anne Klein for Vogue jersey dress. I like it very much, and I think it makes a great dress for winter.

Winter? In March? Of course not! Blue skies and an uncovered BBQ; believe me, winter feels a long way off.  It's not winter, but it IS autumn - a Ridiculously Hot Autumn, aka Feels Like Summer is Supposed to Feel. Unlike the summer just past, which was much more ridiculously hot than autumn.

It's been 30C+ (that's 86F+) for days and days and days now. Perfect for the beach. Absolutely sweltering if you're fool enough to stand under the sun dressed in swathes of dark coloured jersey, doubled over on your chest and bunched for extra warmth on your arms.

Grin and bear it, ye foolish sewist of cosy clothes in hot weather.
                  Hence the foolish smile and proud bearing  ;->.

Pretty odd to make such a cosy dress in such warm weather, but the logic got lost when I followed my whim ("I want to make a flattering but simple little jersey dress I can pop on in this warm weather") over to the pattern stash and focussed on jersey + dress.  Be warned; these are the perils of a lack of planning.

Look yonder, it's a plane carrying patterns to Australia!

I didn't change this pattern much - simple changes to accommodate my slight pear-ish-ness and a slight lack of fabric, and then a couple of minor "personal taste" changes.

The pattern envelope back says "NOTE: No provisions provided [sic] for above waist adjustment. Purchased belt."  Although above waist adjustments are possible if you need to widen the dress at the waist (grade up to the next size, as I did), unless you're prepared to lose the interesting cut-in-one, foldover drape design, I don't think you could lengthen the bodice without scaling up the width of the rest of the bodice. So if you're a longer in the torso than the standard Vogue sizing this is probably not the best pattern for you...  I don't think a purchased belt has anything to do with the above waist adjustments you can't make but (note) my belt is also purchased. Silly!

This pattern demands fabric 150cm wide (60"), but if you have enough yardage you can get away with a slightly lesser width by giving your sleeves an additional seam. I have a seam below my elbow on both sleeves at the point where the elastic for the ruched part of the sleeve is supposed to start - but I decided to leave the elastic off and instead sewed the lower sleeves a little narrower.  You don't need to do this on the back bodice / sleeve pattern piece, but I wanted the back of the sleeves to match the front.

And the other little change I made was to use a shiny black bias binding on the back neckline instead of a self-fabric back neck facing - in past stretch dresses I've found the back neckline can grow over time, and I wanted to curtail this tendency.

Cold weather, I'm ready!


A big thank you to my patient camera holder, who never complains and rarely drops the camera:

And I hope to be reporting back here soon - my Elisalex is taking shape, but I'm running late for Faye's Essential Tops Sew-a-long...

See you!
Gabrielle