This is the Lois dress by Tessuti patterns, and it's a pattern I bought relatively promptly after loving the pattern photos - but then sat on for ages. Same story for this lovely fabric from The Fabric Store - when I saw this fabric up sewn up quickly by a few social media friends (@clever_tinker for one) I rushed to Surry Hills to get some, and then brought it home and stashed it.
Maybe for 2019 I should try a bit harder to sew the patterns and fabrics I like earlier rather than later? What a ridiculous problem to have ;o.
Here's a quick close-up for a better view of the fabric and style lines - and FYI the fabric is a slinky polyester woven with a satiny back:
The dress is quite low cut, which I think makes this more of a special occasion dress than a work or everyday dress - I've nearly finished version number 2 and have plans for a couple more, but there's nothing wrong with a wardrobe full of special occasion dresses, is there?
Hmm... after reviewing the photos I decided it was actually a tad too low cut - so I've now sewn the lowest 2cm of the v-neck together on the inside of the dress, which makes it just the right depth on me for a low cut dress with complete bra coverage, and also makes the bust fit a smidge less loose.
By virtue of a couple of silly mistakes I sewed this up a size smaller than intended. I thought I was making the size 12, my size according to the pattern instructions, but I accidentally cut a size 10 for the bodice pieces and then cut out the skirt pieces poorly, necessitating wide seam allowances that took it down a size too. Luckily this has turned out to be just the right size. I wouldn't necessarily advise following my lead, but I would recommend basting your cut out pieces together to check the fit before sewing in your zip within the side dart / side bodice seam - if you do this you might also discover (like me, hooray!) that you don't even need the zip!
I should also mention that I have an extra CF seam in my skirt because my fabric was narrower than the recommended width and I just couldn't fit the width of the skirt front and sides across my fabric. This hasn't particularly affected the dress apart from making the CF bust intersection a bit bulky, but it did bump up the fabric requirement for the dress. I also lengthened the skirt pieces about 2 inches, and next time around am lengthening it a little more.
There's a step in the instructions (step 9) that asks you to ease the front skirt side seams into the back skirt side seams, but I couldn't think why you'd want to do that*, so I just sewed the seams normally and then cut off the resulting extra length in the front skirt.
* If you've sewn the Lois dress and followed this step, I would love to know how the easing step worked out - did it do something interesting to the skirt drape, or help the skirt skim over hips and butt?
I've tried using tearaway Vilene before but haven't enjoyed using it - so instead I cut the relevant pattern pieces from a lightweight iron-in interfacing, and this worked pretty well. Before I started sewing the dress I was concerned that the v-neckline would gape, but on top of the tearaway Vilene the pattern uses a clever binding method to stabilise the neckline, and there's absolutely no risk of it stretching out.
Thank you very much to those of you who replied to my last blog post - it seems that YES, there are still blog readers around! I still enjoy reading blogs too, but wasn't sure how many of us there were... I suspect that there are lots of people who intend to blog but just don't get around to it very often - it's obviously much more time consuming than instagram or facebook, but if you've got verbal diarrhea (ha, that's me!) those media can be a bit frustrating.
So - I'm going to try to keep blogging, and I need to build back up my own list of blogs to read. If you're still (or newly) blogging I would love to know where; please feel very welcome to leave your blog address in the comments :).
Thanks for reading and have a very happy new year
- Gabrielle x
No comments:
Post a Comment