Bare Threads: Spring Fling* Dress

Bienvenue

Occasionally it seems that world is in pure chaos with nothing making sense, but that doesn't matter as long as I can sew. Sewing is a form of art, or at the very least creativity, and a form of expression. A great outlet for the tension of everyday life. Also you can make cute things. The craft revolution is truly taking place, old skills are being revived by a new generation, but with a seriously modern twist.

I've made Mario pillow cases, a giraffe print background, and turned duvet covers into summer dresses. I enjoy making something unique, special, and me- then I like wearing it and watching it fall to pieces or not fit properly. Then I enjoy (slightly less) fixing it.

One day I shall have a room filled with glorious fabrics and boxes of notions, and on that day I will have found my nirvana. But until then this blog will exist as my virtual haberdashery and sewing room. Hopefully you'll enjoy looking at my creations as much as I enjoy looking at other blogs, and you'll be inspire to make something of your own.

Saturday, 12 May 2012

Spring Fling* Dress

After a few months of doing little projects and customising/destroying stuff it was super fun to be back making an actual piece of clothing, namely a dress. My sister had bought me some nice fabric from the Victoria and Albert Museum (actually the website but whatevs) for my birthday- she bought me a metre of each so I didn't think I could make a full thing with the fabric. I bought a few metres of plain navy blue cotton fabric (because I'm dumb, I thought the V and A fabric was flowers on a blue background but it's actually a black background, but there was also some dark pink fabric with little black flowers that I used to break up the other two making the contrast between black and blue less obvious).

I used McCalls pattern 6503 which had really cute drawings on the cover but, as usual, the real lady wearing the real dress looked fairly underwhelming...because of the dress not the lady btw. But this is the issue with all patterns, so I wasn't concerned. My dress is version A- the top left.

I collected my ingredients, cut out the pattern pieces, then cut out the fabric pieces. As I said I cut the bodice from the blue flowery fabric, the midriff from the dark pink fabric, and the skirt from the dark blue.

Following the, sometimes inscrutable, instructions I attached the interfacing to the facings (also in dark pink), sewed together the bodice, made and attached a ruffle (a five minute job which I protracted out for about 2 hrs) and attached the facing to the bodice. Then I stopped for the snack break :)
I think it was sometime around here that I realised I had made the ruffle too short but I would have had to unpick everything to fix it so I left it.

For the first time I actually planned ahead and bought the zip before I started sewing the dress so I wouldn't have the stop to take a trip into town to buy one...although I didn't buy bias binding** which I also needed so I did have to take a trip for that...doh!

*Not having a fling, just like to rhyme...thought I'd clear that up.
**Bias binding is a fairly thin strip of fabric cut on the bias, or at 45degrees, which you use on the edge of arm holes, necklines, dress hems etc because it is cut on the bias it will stretch around the curve without ruckling.***
***Ruckling may not be a real word, but I use it a lot.