Pleasant Purple Dress - Part 1

I was a little concerned when I went to cut the dress' skirt out of the purple woven fabric. If I couldn't get the skirt out of the fabric, I would have had to go back to the drawing board.  Luckily...can I say that again...luckily it worked!  The skirt pieces fit so there's only scraps of the purple fabric left.

Originally the dress was going to be solid purple to match the jacket just like the inspiration picture.  But due to fitting issues, I recut some pieces of the jacket from the extra fabric to make it work.  I have no regrets about that especially since the jacket turned out fabulously ~ if I say so myself! *LOL*  It just meant that I had to rethink how to use the remaining fabric.

So back to the fabric collection and I found the silk border print that was pictured with the fabric in the last post.  I decided to make an empire waist dress using the silk border print on the top with the higher waisted purple skirt.

So the main emphasis of this post is the top of the dress and the lining.  First the silk is thinner than the woven purple fabric. Because of that I needed to take care to make sure that the two fabrics worked together and not against each other.

A 1" strip of lightweight fusible knit interfacing was added to the center back seams to aid with the invisible zipper insertion.  Another 1" strip of interfacing was added to the neckline.  Not just to stabilize it and make it sturdy for the lining insertion but also because I've decided to add piping to the neckline too.  I know, I know it's like I'm throwing the kitchen sink into this dress, but seriously, it's gonna look great!

When working on the lining, I decided that I would rather self-line the top half instead of using a full aubergine lining. That's what's pictured above. The lining hanging waiting to be inserted into the dress.

For the short sleeves I've cut them from another piece of the border print so it compliments the dress' bodice but gives it a little punch.  Of course, if I'm wearing the jacket you won't be able to see them but when I take off the jacket, bam!

The dress is almost finished.  I have about 90 more minutes of work to do to complete it. I'm going to try hard to work on it a little every evening after work. Don't know if I'll be successful but that's what I'm aiming for!

My next pieces ~
I'm going to work on the Vogue jacket and another version of my TNT dress during the MLK Jr. weekend.  Monday is a holiday here in the US, so I will have three days off to sew.  I'm already mentally working through the steps so that I will come out of the gate swinging to get these two pieces completed during the three days.  They are the final chocolate pieces for the City in Winter Collection, that when completed means I have only four pieces left to sew and the wardrobe will be done.  Thank goodness!  I need this to be over so that I can move onto the rest of the items on my sewing list!  However, I am excited and my sewing mojo is firing on all cyclinders.  I can't wait for three more days to wallow!

...as always more later!