This is my second attempt at this pattern; the design from page 10 of Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi; my first was here. I loved the design, but unfortunately that first dress was kinda disastrous. Firstly, I didn't love the fabric I had used, which was a super-cheapy thick-ish polyester selected for its colour only from the remnants table. On top of the doubtful quality of the fabric and the fact that it didn't drape very well, my finishing off of that dress was of equally doubtful quality... I didn't have enough of the blue to cut facings, and used instead a tobacco coloured fabric, a too-thin and also-nasty scrap of polyester. And I didn't fit the dress properly to myself, and allowed too much seam allowance around the armscye, but sewed a normal width seam allowance, resulting that the dress dug into my armpits in a painful and irritating way, and to unpick the stitching plus understitching around the armscye just seemed all too difficult, since I had sewn them up scrupulously well, and combined with the nasty fabric quality... (deep breath) I guess in hindsight I was treating the dress like a muslin, which is how it turned out as I wore it precisely two times. I know, I'm embarrassed by my wastefulness, too... I can only hope that someone at the Salvos with smaller arms than me saw something good in that thing...
This time I carefully measured the bodice area, armscye and the hip area against an old favourite Burda 8511; and made the necessary fitting adjustments to the armscye. The fabric is a rather nice thin and very drape-y, but still a bit nubbly wool/polyester mix suiting fabric in charcoal marle. For the cord casing around the "hole" I made bias tape from the same fabric. The cord is a 120cm brown/black bootlace.
I've made a new dress for winter!
This fabric, a sort of very roughly spun and woven silk, with some very stiffish almost stick-like pieces woven into it, was one of my Christmas presents; that I bought so the children could have some things to give me; hehe, I know, so thoughtful of me... I always wanted to make some sort of unadorned sheath dress with it, something that was plain-ish, yet still chic and polished, that could be dressed up or down to suit a multitude of "looks". And in an ideal world, pockets would be in there too somehow. But how to incorporate pockets into a sheath dress? It is almost impossible, without resorting to the ol' patch pockets, which are not very chic and not a very polished look. I wanted "polished", in case if I so desired I just could wear my dress to semi-formal do-es. Occasionally, I do so desire. So when I saw this pattern, dress 128 from the 08/2009 Burdastyle magazine I realised that while the dress did appear quite fitted and sheath-like, the pleated fullness at the front of the skirt meant that inseam side pockets were a distinct possibility. So I tried out putting some in, and they worked out pretty good, imo. Yes! (self high five) Is that a case of having my cake and eating it too, or what?!
Apart from the inseam pockets, I made a few other small modifications. Firstly, I have a slight pet aversion to dresses that have a waist seam on the front and not on the back. Just privately, it bothers my pernickety need for order and continuity... so I cut the back pieces to have a corresponding waist seam at the back, corresponding to fit with the front waist seam. This also enabled me to make a slight sway back adjustment easily, a double win.
Also, my dress is fully lined with acetate lining fabric, unlike the pattern, which stipulates a bodice lining only. Why would you have a lined bodice, and not go that small extra step to line the skirt section? Hmmm... imo, a skirt lining is mandatory in a winter dress, so it doesn't stick to your tights. For my dress lining pieces, apart from the very top neckline and sleeve bits which are to the pattern, I used mostly the lower portion of an ol' faithful Burda 8511. So apart from the bust darts at the front, and long double ended body darts at the back, the lining is quite plain.
