Finally, here is my first successful dress (I’ve attempted before, but that didn’t get too far). Photo taken in my sister’s room, which we painted this week. Did the trim today, so it’s still drying.
(very difficult to get a decent photo of this, on my own anyway. looks better, and slimmer, in person.)
Pattern is Butterick 4443, view C (the yellow) without the bow, obviously. Size 14. Fabric was cotton/linen blend from Fabricland for $5 a metre! Quite a nice fabric.
The pattern was…well, challenging for me, queen of skirts and bags. I liked the princess shaping rather than darts, and once I figured out where to clip, they were easy to put together. I didn’t understitch the lining, which was good, because I ran out of thread…not till after I finished, but then there were alterations to be made.
The pattern really was fairly straightforward, though. The skirt is a really nice shape. I bought this pattern awhile back, so I’d gotten the 8-14 size – I made the 14, but it’s a bit snug in the waist despite reducing the seam allowances on the sides to less than 3/8″. Wearable, though.
Once I finished slip-stitching in the bodice lining (very tedious), I put it on, zipped it up, and….it was too big in the bodice. The back was gaping madly. So I had to make some modifications:
Two back darts.
Plus, I had to go and wreck my nice lined bodice by taking it in at the shoulder – with a different colour thread, too! Ah, well. I wore it out to SnB on Wednesday and got quite a few compliments.
And since the sewing bug’s got me, I finished another dress today! Okay, it’s not totally totally done, but it will be tomorrow. I even cut yet another dress tonight, and it should be fairly easy to sew up tomorrow.
Quick knitting update: Unfortunately, I had to rip what I’d done of the Blueberry Greek Pullover that I showed the other day! I went to count the stitches to figure out how many more increases to do, and realized I’d just cast on the wrong number of stitches. Not the smaller size or anything, just kind of a random number inbetween. I think I’m finally, finally back on track.
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