Navy & Black Square Necked Dress

Or the second dress in the Five in Five series...

This dress was driven by the fabric.  Seriously.  I found this fabric at Emmaonesock...

...and I added it to some black wool crepe from the collection.

To end up with this dress...

Making the dress ~

I don't think I had a specific inspiration dress in mind for this one.  It's a mash up of quite a few dresses I've looked at and been inspired by in the fall fashion magazines, catalogs and on Style.com.  However, to get this dress, I started with my TNT dress but used the square neck facing pieces from out-of-print Vogue 8442 to make changes to the dress front and back neckline.

I also altered the pattern so that it would have an empire waistline.

Pattern Sandwich:  Original TNT Dress Pattern,

Square Neck Facing Pattern & Tracing Paper 

to make new pattern pieces

New pattern pieces ~ dress bodice and dress skirt

The dress top and sleeves were made from the EOS fabric...

...and the dress skirt from the black wool crepe.  A lining was added to the dress by using the pattern pieces.

A few construction details~
Since I'm trying to incorporate the things I learned from the Cynthia Guffey 7 Skills video, I added tailor tacks to the darts instead of marking them with paper and tracing wheel.

Tailor tacks

Then ironed the center leg flat and stitched between the tacks.

Making the darts this way, helps to eliminate the pucker that you get when you sew the darts incorrectly.  And even though I know not to backstitch at the dart tip, I've been guilty of doing it.  So now, I do the turn around thing at the end of the dart that Cynthia describes, as well as, no longer starting to sew the dart at the tip.  It's amazing how those simple changes have changed the appearance of my darts.

I used the back facing pieces for the dress back from the Vogue pattern.  This way it had the same high square neckline as the Vogue inspiration dress.

That back zipper is almost perfect but I can live with it!

Resisting the urge to add piping to the neckline and the waistline, I let the fabrics do the talking.  Other than that, the dress is constructed like I normally would.


A few more pictures of the dress~

I really like this dress.  So much so I almost posted it before the Lacy Pleather Dress.  I can't wait for chillier days to wear this one out and about. The EOS quilted lightweight silky fabric that I used for the top was an absolute joy to sew with and it went so well with the wool crepe without any additional fiddling. Love that!

However, I have to tell you that this will be the last black dress I sew for awhile.  It seems like that's the only color or black 'n white variation that I've sewn for the last month.  I definitely need to add some color to my sewing! *LOL*

The third of the Five in Five garments is laying on my cutting table.  Since this is a top and skirt pattern combo that I haven't used before, I will most likely split up the pattern alteration and construction posts.

...as always more later!