The Red Cotton Eyelet Dress

Lace and eyelet garments are mainstream now. There's loads of lace everywhere.  I've made quite a few lace pieces over the last couple of years so I had no real desire to make another one this summer.  Then you know that whole tear apart and put the sewing room back together happened and I touched all of my fabric.

This red cotton eyelet fabric stuck in my mind and I decided that I wanted a simple sheath dress with short sleeves from the fabric. Nothing exciting...just a good work dress.  So that's what I made.

Materials...
Fabric ~
2 yards of red cotton eyelet from Fabric Mart via the collection




Notions ~
2 yards of tan bemberg rayon lining
22" red zipper
red rayon seam binding
red corded piping purchased from Daytona Trimmings

Construction Details...
This pattern has been made over and over again because it is my standard go-to dress pattern.  However, choosing the cotton eyelet did present some challenges. The first being whether to underline or line the dress.  For this dress I really wanted to line it. I wanted the two pieces (fashion fabric and lining) to be connected at the neckline and armholes only.

So the next thing was to decide what color to line the dress in.  Should it be a total red dress, or should I use white, black, nude or tan lining.  I finally decided to go with a darker tan which will emphasize the red fabric.

The dress has a v-neckline to make it a little different from all of the sheath dresses in my closet.  I added piping to the neckline to finish it off nicely. Since I was adding piping I decided to add it to the sleeve too.  However, I didn't just want to add it to the hemline...here is what I did...

Sleeve serge finished

The sleeve band is the length of sleeve hem by 4"

Sleeve with piping pinned on

Close up of piping pinned to the sleeve hem

Close up of the piping basted to the sleeve hem

Sleeve in original state & then pressed and folded in half

Close up of piping inserted between the sleeve and the band

Sleeve with piping and band

Pic of sleeve on my arm

The only other thing I want to address is the seams.  

• Sewing this together I used a size 80 universal needle with a 2.6 stitch length.  I wanted to make sure that the stitches were short enough to hold the seams together despite the eyelet holes.  
• I did serge finish the dress pieces prior to stitching them together.
• And except for the center back seam the seams were pressed flat and open.
• However, on the lining all of the seams were pressed to the side so that they wouldn't show through the eyelets.

Besides including a few design details to make this dress special unto itself and not looking like every other sheath dress in my closet, it was a simple sew with some special details.

Some more photos...

This is a simple dress made with an eyelet fabric.  It's more utilitarian than flashy...more need than want...just a pretty red dress for work.

...as always more later!