A Lacy Tried and True

Lace pieces are in.  Lace pieces are so in that they are everywhere.  Earlier this season, I did a post about lace inspiration dresses and this version from my TNT pattern was one of the first garments I put on my spring/summer sewing list.  It was just a matter of finding the right fabric which I found earlier this year and dyed last month.  It was finally ready to be used...and this is the end result...

Some stats ~
Fabric:
Cotton lace - tea dyed to get the antique color

Pattern:
TNT dress pattern

Notions:
22" invisible zipper
beige silk charmeuse fabric
striped bias binding
rayon seam binding

Construction ~
Okay this is my TNT dress pattern, there are no new construction tips. However, I did have to take a lot of care when applying the lace to the silk charmeuse underlining.  That was a three step process.  

*First the two pieces were pinned together using ALOT of pins to insure that the lace fabric was attached together everywhere.  
*Then I ran a basting stitch through the center of the two pieces and around the edges of the two pieces.  
*Finally the sides were serged together.

The point of all these stitches was to insure that the two pieces functioned as one. I didn't want the dress to be two pieces - a lining and the lace fabric...again going back to ease of wear. I also had to take care when inserting the invisible zipper. 

The cotton lace was very bulky in certain points so I wanted to leave some space for the fabric to meet but not get caught in the teeth.  Even stitching the seams had to be done more carefully so that I wouldn't catch any of the lace or the lining in the stitching.  

As well as putting up the hem...at one point I thought about just cutting around the lace motifs and leaving them as is.  But I thought of this great idea too late into the sewing process, because I didn't have enough full lace motifs to follow through.  I ended up adding a one inch hem, pressed up carefully and pinned at every motif.  I added rayon seam binding to the hemline and then carefully hand stitched it to the underlining.  Which ended up not being careful enough, since I had to go back in undo some of the stitching and sew it down again...but it was worth it!

Some final thoughts ~
*I had to take a lot of care with sewing this dress because of the thickness of the lace motifs.
*Even though I've made this dress several times, these fabrics caused it to fit a little closer than usual.  So I have very small seams to insure that it has the ease I want in the final dress.
*The silk charmeuse lining is inserted with the matte against the lace.  The shiny side looked too dressy for work.
*This was an expensive (for me) dress to make up ~ the cotton lace was $20 a yard and the silk charmeuse was $32 a yard.  Not exactly inexpensive but worth every penny because I got the dress I wanted!

Making your own version ~
Since my trendy lace dress is made from my TNT pattern, I'm once again featuring current dress patterns that you can purchase or may already have in your pattern collection, to make a similar dress.

McCalls 6505 

Vogue 8766

McCalls 6460

In Conclusion ~
I'm glad that I've made my own version of the trendy lace dress and using this particular fabric presented enough of a sewing challenge to make this a very rewarding sew. This dress embodies the spirit of my "Ye Olde Familiar" series because the fabric is the essential element of the dress. So this is one more completed dress off of my sewing list. I'm now moving onto my July project!

A few more pics...

...as always more later!