Hi everyone, I hope you're having a good weekend so far! As my exams are now finished and I don't have to go back to school yet, I've been able to have a load of quality time with my sewing machine which has been fabulous. This dress was on my capsule wardrobe list which I though i'd better make a start on seeing as August is only a few months away. The fabric was bought at Leicester market for 3 pounds a metre. This dress used pretty much the whole of the 2 metres. In total including the bias binding I used to hem it and the invisible zip the dress cost around 9 pounds which isn't half bad really. The bodice is fully lined with an ever so soft white cotton that was in my stash courtesy of my Grandma.
For the bodice I used my bodice sloper but played around a bit with dart manipulation. The pattern on the left is my sloper with the normal dart placement and the pattern on the right shows where the dart ended up to give the V shape on the bodice. I did this for the back as well.
Fitwise my sloper is getting there. I'm happier with the bust dart placement now, it was far too high before. The armholes are a bit tight so I'll take more off the pattern piece at the armhole curve. The skirt is basically a huge gathered trapezium. It hangs beautifully when the wind isn't pushing it around.
Now, stripe-matching-wise there were some good seams and there were some not so good seams. Funnily, although I'm doing the "check out my stripe matching skills pointing thing" I'm doing it to the seam that isn't quite perfect as opposed to the seam on the other side of the bodice where the stripe matching actually is perfect. Oh well. The stripes were actually running vertically along the selvedge and as I much prefer horizontal stripes I just cut everything on the cross grain instead which seemed to work okay.
Here's a gander at the lined bodice. The white is a bit see-through but that's alright, it does it's job of enclosing all the seams so it's fine.
This picture would be be twirling to show you the fullness of the skirt. However my sense of direction isn't at it's best while twirling so I'm twirling steadily out of frame. Whoops!
Next up I'm working on my lace bomber jacket and here's a sneaky peek at the fabrics I'm using. Isn't the lace just droolworthy?!?!
That's all for now folks! I'm off to enjoy my week of lie-ins and sewing.
Thanks so much for reading and to Dad for taking the photos!
Lauren xx