Midi Dress

I am proud of this project for two reasons: I love wearing it -it is comfortable, becoming, versatile- and the serious pattern hankering I successfully manage to achieve. Sorry for the boasting, but it is important for me to state the level of satisfaction a project has entailed -not so high, too often- for the record.

Sew Over It Aida dress was the inspiration, combined with Named's Taika dress pattern, which I am making rigth now after some more pattern hackering. 

When I saw these, I though I could recreate them, altering a previous pattern which I love, the Diana dress.  This project was a mixture of two patterns. On the one  hand, the Diana dress, with bust darts in curved vertical seams, o semi-princess seams, as I call it. It is a very good idea to shape big tits like mine, adjust in the waist and hips, and give it as much evasée skirt as needed. I used the neck cut and armscyes of another of the dresses of that wonderful book. 

Well, I used this pattern as a base here. I drew a line under the bust all around the four long pieces, and redo the upper part, closing the dart under the arm and marking the gathering under the bust, which I simply adjusted to match the two bottom parts.

 

I followed the same procedure in the back as in the Taika dress. 

All this hackering went quite well, although I had to alter the under bust line, pushing it up (Luckily the bottom pieces could be easily modified to have higher waist lines).

I had to change the sleeves too. The ruffled, big sleeves were too much in this dark, solid viscose. so I used a good old sleeve I like to simply take 5 cm width off the underarm area. 

Some mishap happened in the making process that I have to duly note. The under bust area, in the bottom pieces, was somewhat stretched when I stitched the self encased seam. Next time I will apply some interfacing to prevent that to happen. Pieces cut on the bias or across grain easily stretch at the minimum excuse. 

I love to finish all my dressed with self enclosed seams, and this dress is also perfectly neat outside and inside. 

The invisible zip at the back is too visible for some reason, and I don't know whose fault is that. 

All those issues must be addressed in my next project, which is going to be the open-at-the-front version of this. 

I started the dress in spring and finished in summer, so i had to make 3/4 sleeves, which I love, and i only managed to wear it one day... but I tried it on with low boots and it looks lovely. 

So, all in all, a great make, although not perfect. And my first midi dress, I think! This is a new fashionable feature I've very happily incorporated.

Keep learning...