Sew Obsessed
Cooking / Posted on April 22nd, 2008
I’ve been completely obsessed over trying to sew a dress to wear to my sister-in-law’s wedding next month. It has turned out to be two or three times as much work as I anticipated. Here’s the first dress (which I’m embarrassed to show you):
Oh. my. god. It’s soooooooooo terrible. I look pregnant.
I love the fabric. I love the design (as pictured on the pattern envelope–Simplicity 3831). But this looks sooo bad on me. First of all, I should have known better than to put in a french seam where fabric had been gathered, but I didn’t, and ended up with that ghastly bulky seam. Also, it has become evident to me that commercial pattern drafters don’t like breasts. If I had no breasts, the bottom of the bodice would have fallen in a flattering spot. This most certainly does not. I redrafted the pattern, adding two-and-a-half inches to the length, just to get the seam beneath my breasts rather than directly on them.
The redrafting worked out fine. Nevertheless, the dress still made me look pregnant, so I scrapped that in favor of something a little more streamlined. (I’m going to rip apart the dress and use the fabric to make a blouse later on.)
The second dress has presented its share of challenges. I think the fabric is beautiful, but it’s slippery, stretchy, likes to fray and resents any effort from the iron to press it into shape. It was extremely challenging trying to cut out the pattern pieces, and as I’m sewing, I frequently have to compensate for cutting irregularities. Despite that, it’s coming together much better than the first dress.
My mother will be paying us a visit early next week, which is great, because I’ll need someone to demonstrate installing a zipper. I just can’t wrap my head around it…folding and pressing the fashion fabric and lining, how to get it to all come together… The dress is very close though, and from pin-fittings, I know it fits better than earlier attempts. I just hope I don’t end up looking like too much of a fuddy-duddy in my homemade garment. Many of the wedding guests are fashion concious and care a lot about labels, trends, etc. I’ve never been one of those people though, so I’m not sure why I’m worrying about it now!
Meanwhile, news stories like these are worrying me, so I’m off to market to stock up on food staples:
Posted by 
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Hi Amy! I really like the second dress. I have a feeling maybe the first was just the wrong style for you? (not sure, since I haven’t seen the actual pattern).
For your pink dress, stay stitching would have helped keep the pieces behaving while you were sewing them together. What kind of fabric is that? It’s very pretty.
An invisible zipper might work really well for that dress, although personally I hate putting them into anything. I learned how to install a zipper by hand and that’s pretty much the way I still like to do zippers. Obviously for anything sturdier I use the sewing machine, but to this day I still prefer a hand-picked zipper installation over anything else for dresses.
Oh, and I found a link for you, if you’re interested – http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/t00202.asp
The Threads website has some great information on it. I used to buy the magazines years ago, they had all kinds of stuff from sewing to knitting and embroidery inside.
Anyway, I don’t know how much sewing experience you’ve had, so hopefully I haven’t just told you a lot of what you already know!
Can’t wait to see the dress being modelled.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:04 am
The second dress is really pretty Amy! And you know you wouldn’t be the first person to sew a pattern that looks grand on the package but looks so wrong on the body. But you got it perfectly the second time it looks like. Come on and model it for us! If I had a sewing machine I would definately try sewing again. Maybe later this year I’ll splurge and buy myself one.
I have a wedding to go to on March 10th and you know I have nothing to wear to it! yikes! Hmmmm………..
Anyway, I love your dress. You are so talented!