After the fireworks and exhaustion from vacation and new years eve, I spent January 1 and 2 by myself. I took out an stashed piece of fabric that I’ve liked for a while and found a pattern with a design feature I wanted to explore and got to work. I wanted to make a dress to wear to the graduation of the first class of 2015. I was planning on this being it.
This is the pattern I chose. I went for a combination of view 4 and 5 with lengthened sleeves. What is so special, to me, about this pattern is that it has princess seams in front and back. However, it’s got only the one pattern piece to make both the center and side front/back. I wanted to see if and how that works. It turns out, it works!
I made the smallest size, 36-38 and made it from a stretch cotton fabric with giant leaves on it. I hoped it would fit because I’m generally not a size 38, but I figured, smaller is always possible and larger is difficult. The shell of the dress was put together and then I had to decide how to put in the sleeves, right or wrong side out. I pinned in both ways and decided I needed a twist and put in the sleeves wrong side out. I felt less like a giant couch that way.
When it was all together and I basted in the back seam, I found out I could get in and out of it without problems. I also found it was really big… So I took in the back seam a bit more. It should have been 1.5 cm, but it was as much as you can see in the left picture below. There were facings involved in the making of this, and they work perfectly fine!
All in all, it took me 2 days to finish basically everything. Then I took another day to hem. I hate hemming, so it took a while to get that done. I did invisible stitches and I’m quite proud of the way they turned out. On the right is a close up of the neckline. I think it looks nicely done!
Here’s the finished product. I really like it with the white belt.
Last Friday, during graduation, this dress did have its first outing and it performed splendidly. Definitely a keeper, especially with my old petticoat under it.
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