Out of Darkness: A Dress

It seems I've got a new black dress to show you:

Or do I... 


        Half a black dress?

Wah-hey, it's BLUE!

 Hallelujah, my colour vows* are SAFE!

*: not really vows as such, more an observation at the end of MMM13 that I should wear colours more :-/

 

Do you recognise the pattern??






Hey don't worry, this is not pattern trivia; I wouldn't expect any of you to recognise it, but it's Vogue 1193, an OOP DKNY dress pattern.


My previous version (2 years ago! Wow!) was red ponte - so different!

I sewed this up as a size 12 in the upper bodice / shoulders / sleeves, and a 14 from the waist down, as usual - and it feels like a really good fit. There's a little extra room at the waist and at the shoulders, but I'm not too fussed about it.

And in any case - even though I'm kind of ecstatic about the way the dress looks to fit from behind - for me this dress is all about the fabric. I bought this amazing stuff 6 months ago at Tessuti Fabrics on a whim, and I was absolutely busting to make a wiggly, fitted dress with it, but I was scared I'd mess it up and waste the fabric. 



You can see in the photos below what my fabric looked like as I dried it in the sun, back in January. A dark floral border print starts along one selvedge and extends to about the centre of the width - and the fabric is really wide:

The fabric is a stretch cotton (+ ?), with the stretch running from blue edge to black edge. The print reminded me of the OTT D&G fruit print dresses from not so long ago... dream, dream...



My "vision" was to have the flowers growing up one side of the dress, trellis style, and for the fabric to wrap around me without obvious breaks in the side seams and without any big flowers in the wrong places. Obviously I didn't go so far as redrafting the pattern to remove side seams (!!) but I did spend a few happy hours moving pattern pieces in different permutations on the fabric and working out how the flowers on the angled (due to side pleats) front skirt could be made to look like they were running up the same line as those in the non-angled bodice.

 

With the centre back seam very stark, I moved the invisible zip to a side seam. I have to show it to you because I think it's my best invisible zipper ever - YAY!
 

I had so much fun making this dress. And I know it's going to be so much fun wearing it! 

 

See you soon

- Gabrielle xx