I chose to do version A, the one with straps rather than sleeves. A nice 50s style type dress. I'd been wanting one for a while. I picked up a zip and interfacing at the shop while I was there too. The next step was buying fabric. The design I chose was black with white polka dots. It's a classic. The pattern told me how much I would need, and I just chose some cheap fabric on ebay. I decided I didn't want to spend much money on fabric seeing as it was a first attempt and was bound to go wrong. I could get some better fabric for a later attempt if this one went well. This was a decision I came to regret, cos the fabric was horrible. It was very thin and slightly see-through and also left dye on my fingers as I worked, like cheap newspaper. Yuck! And after just one wash it faded a fair bit too. Ah well. Live and learn!
So next I took my measurements and cut out all the pattern pieces I would need to my sizes. This was a seriously boring job and took aaaaaages. I had to listen to lots of audio books while cutting to stop me from going mad. Then it was time to cut out the fabric pieces. I was terrified of making a mistake, but the instructions were really clear and it all went pretty smoothly. I did have a problem with space though, as my bedroom is quite small and there wasn't room to lay the whole length of fabric out at once. I also couldn't fit all the pieces onto the fabric in the layout the pattern suggested. Good thing I bought extra fabric! Still, I pinned all the pattern pieces to the fabric with the correct orientation and cut all the pieces out.
I decided to lengthen the skirt a bit to cover my knees. Risky move, changing a design when I didn't really know what I was doing. Still, my modification seemed to work just fine. :) Anyone spotted the mistake though? Yep, the darts. Those little triangular nicks in the bodice were meant to be sewn, and NOT cut out. Ah welll, live and learn. I sewed them back together and it went OK.
The next step was sewing things together! The instructions were pretty clear and I didn't have many problems following them. I found dress parts were much easier to work with than curtains. So much less fabric! Sewing was so quick! So much less heavy too! And sewing curves was really no more difficult than sewing straight lines. So I started off with the bodice. Sewing was all pretty straightfoward, really, though some bits were a little fiddly and frustrating. The interfacing was a bit bewildering though. I still don't really understand why I put it where I did and it's purpose. It's iron-on reinforcing stuff. Does the chest portion of my dress really need reinforcing? Shrug.
After the fiddliness of the bodice, it surprised me just how quick and easy doing the skirt was. When all the bits were sewn together to gather it all I had to do was do a couple of rows of loose stitches and pull them until the gathering was even. Easy! It was also surprisingly easy to sew the bunched up fabric to the bodice, and it also looked good! I was worried that it was going to look terrible. In fact things only got complicated when it came to the zip. Urgh! Annoying fiddly thing. Did you know you have to use a completely different sewing machine foot for sewing in zips? And it turns out you also have to pin and baste them before you can sew. You have to pin the zip into place and then sew the fabric parts closed over the zip, otherwise the fabric moves and shows the zip when you sew. And once the zip is sewn in you need to cut all those hand stitches. Annoying...
Anyway, all that being done, tried it on...and it didn't fit. Too loose in lots of weird ways. I'd made wee adjustments on quite a few of my shop-bought dresses in the past. I've had to shorten the straps on just about every dress I've ever bought. But I just had no idea where to start on this. In the end I did the only thing a girl can do in these sorts of situations and asked my mummy. She put darts in here, here, here, here and here, and it now looks pretty good. Hurrah!
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