Garment No. 1 - Saturday/Sunday's Entry

or as I thought of it during construction..."The Building of A Dress, yet again"

This fabric...

Inspired this dress...

However, it's not exactly how I envisioned the dress when I purchased the fabric. I "saw" my TNT sheath dress with the border at the hemline. I was going to cut off another piece of the border and bring it up to the neckline to carry the eyelet theme throughout the dress. Ummmm, it didn't quite work out that way! *LOL*

First, 40" wide is not as wide as I think it is...especially when it's got a border on either end.

Second, my dress piece would not fit on the crosswise grain of the fabric - which I needed to do to take best advantage of the embroidered border.

Third, the realization that my pattern didn't fit caused me to step back a moment and come up with a new plan. After pawing through ALL and I do mean all the pieces in the TNT dress folder (as an aside, I did not realize that I've made so many different versions of this dress with the accompanying pattern pieces), I came up with a new plan.

So this is my second idea for this fabric...and after adding a seam to the dress, I needed something to give the fabric some pop...I found a yard of black grosgrain ribbon...just a yard...not quite enough. My hand then landed on a remnant of black silk/linen that would work just as well as the ribbon...so I cut the length I needed and added it to the dress.

Some stats:

Fabric:

3 yards of 40" wide black/white cotton eyelet from Fabric Mart

2 yards black cotton batiste from Metro Textiles

1/8 yard black silk/linen fabric

Notions:

22" black invisible zipper

Some additional construction information:

*All of the pieces were underlined with the black cotton batiste because the eyelet holes are pretty large in some places.

*The top of the dress was constructed using the black cotton batiste as a lining instead of an underlining. After playing around with the border print at the neckline, it just didn't work for me...to home sewn looking for this girl...so I sewed the two pieces together this way instead of basting them together as I did for the skirt pieces.

*As I was sewing the satin black bias binding onto the armholes, I noticed how kewl it looked if I only pressed some of it to the inside. So I left about 1/2" all around, pressed it down and then machine stitched it flat. I like how it adds some detail to the armholes and it gives your eyes a place to rest from the eyelet pattern.

*The skirt underlining pieces were given a 2" hem. It was pressed and machine stitched and then basted to the fashion fabric. A 2" hem was chosen because it cleared the embroidered edge of the fabric and didn't show through.

*The black band was two long strips 4" wide, sewn right sides together and then turned, pressed with the edge slip stitched closed. The piece was then sewn down to the front of the dress and again at the side seams.

This dress took about 8 hours to make from the first cut to the final stitches. It's a fun and a little funky dress that I can wear with a jacket to make it more corporate for my job or with my favorite black sweater and some sandals for date night.

So item one is completed...next is a cute little jacket from Simplicity 2570.