Converging Lines: Brasilia-Style!

When Rachel announced her Brasilia dress and asked for a few pattern testers, I jumped. 

There was already a stampede. For a few anxious hours I thought I was too late; too many volunteers had jumped in before me and the time difference was doing me no favours, but HOORAY (ie time to dance like a loon), I was IN!

wandering off with a rock in hand - cheap prop, that's all! 

And as you can see, I've now made myself a very fetching, very stripe-some Brasilia dress. Very fitted too, and that's the fit the dress is designed to have - honestly, for once I feel like I've nailed the fit. With some of that fabric that no one won at my giveaway - huh! Well if you won't take it, I'll have to sew it myself, so there! 

first jumping, now dancing?

As you can see, this is a fitted sheath dress, but it's got these really interesting details - bust darts that emerge from the centre front, and triangles at the side that came about when Rachel played around with fish eye darts. I loved the look of these details in the tech drawing, and I thought stripes would really show them off.  

My dress didn't need radical modifications from the original pattern - but I started out with a toile down to hip level made out of some funky black stretch fabric (hmm, this might also have been left over from my giveaway). I sewed all the seam lines and dart lines in neon lime thread against the black so it was really easy to see where I needed to adjust the pattern, and since I don't have a handy late night fitting buddy I sewed CB together and pretended my zip was going in CF.

I took off about 3cm in total in bodice length and added that to the skirt length, and took in the upper bodice at CF and CB (I have really narrow shoulders). And I ignored the grainline recommendation to cut the side triangles at an angle. Other than that it was just tinkering.

I did consider adding a waist seam, so that I could cut the front skirt on the fold and also cut the front bodice with the stripes in a different direction (I really wanted the upper bodice stripes to splay out towards my shoulders rather than converging), BUT this would have made the bodice stretch the wrong way. As it is, I felt like I was pushing it by cutting out those side triangles at an angle... but I really, really wanted those particular lines to be angled in towards my waist - optical illusion, hey - with the darkest (green) line running along the lower edge of the triangle.

And I have to admit I toyed with the idea of some sneaky pockets extending down from the triangles inside the skirt, but I reckon they would have looked pretty awful in stretch sheath dress. Maybe if someone makes this dress with a bell skirt they'd have room for pockets.  

Rachel's pattern doesn't include seam allowances, and even though I've sewn Burda magazine patterns before, this felt like a first for me (usually when I trace a Burda pattern I'll add the SA as I trace). Interestingly this felt really liberating - it was great to really see where the stitching line was supposed to sit instead of imputing it, and I felt like this gave me a better chance of success with any adjustments.

So, what else to say? Well, with a fabric like this and a pattern like this, both all about showing off interesting design lines, obviously you have to take a lot of care with how the lines meet up. I took a lot of care over my cutting out, but CB and CF were danger zones.

I'm really happy with the way my CF darts line up, but as you may have noticed in the pics above the skirt part of CF isn't perfect - and I'm kind of tempted to go back and take it in just a smidgen to make the stripe width running down the centre of the skirt consistent with the widths to the left and right.

On CB I really wanted my invisible zip to be invisible, and my first attempt failed because I just sewed it in assuming the lines would stay straight. Second time around involved a huge amount of basting (I basted CB so I could iron some fold lines to follow, and then I basted in each side of the zip).
 

Rachel's pattern doesn't include facings (easy to draft your own or use bias tape) or instructions (well, it's pretty easy once you've sewn a few sheath dresses!).

Trickiest sewing was those triangles; they went in perfectly in my toile but were uncooperative in the stripes. I ended up doing some judicious clipping and also basting the curves in place by hand, and this did the trick.  I didn't stabilise these seams though perhaps I should have... we'll see how the dress fares over time. 

   
And the end result? 

A dress that I love.

Rachel, what a wonderful pattern! I'll be in touch with some more detailed feedback, but overall, this dress was an absolute delight to sew :)

See you soon!

- Gabrielle x