Tessuti Cut Out Lace LBD

First post in a month! And this dress almost didn't even make it.
This dress was made as an entry for Tessuti's cut out lace competition. Even though I'd bought the fabric a day or two after the competition was announced (perks/dangers of working a less than ten minute walk from Tessuti's Surry Hills store) there were quite a few things that almost got in the way of the dress being made.

The first thing that delayed this dress was a holiday, and some holiday sewing of shorts and cargo pants to wear while bushwalking in Western Australian national parks. Because of this, I didn't have time to start on my competition entry until I got back from holiday a week and a half into September. But the bigger problem was that I just couldn't seem to get my make to look how I wanted it to look.

I'd decided as soon as I saw the lace in store that I wanted to do as little as possible to it, and just let the fabric speak for itself. I decided to buy a single panel so I wouldn't be tempted to do anything too fussy. I also wanted to use the half flower piece at the centre top of the panel as my neckline, so I thought a simple fitted sheath dress would be the go, and started pinning and draping on my mannequin.

It didn't quite go according to plan. First, I needed to do the centre pack seam and insert the zipper. I had been going to use an open ended zip, but when I got the black open ended zipper I had out, it wasn't long enough. Given this was last weekend and entries closed yesterday, I decided I didn't have time to go searching for a long enough open ended zip and instead searched through for other options. 

Initially I went for a normal black zip about 45 centimetres long. I pinned it in, folding the fabric in further as it got down to the waist. I stitched the zipper in, and then for the lower half of the seam eased the seam back out from the waist to the hip and then straight down to the bottom. I then folded in some double pointed darts to fit the bust and waist, putting in two long darts and four short darts - two near the centre front, two close to the sides. I made sure they fit my mannequin, sewed them up, trimmed out the neckline, stitched the shoulders together, and cut out some of the lace for armholes.

Then I tried it on and it looked terrible.

The darts sat too low, leaving a weird billowy gaping at the bust, and the zipper at the back didn't sit flat either. The neckline was the only thing I was fairly happy with. Even the lace at the armholes was droopy at the back. That was going to be an easy fix, it would just need the extra pieces cut out once everything else was done, but the rest required going right back to the start. 

The first change I made was to rip the zipper out and redo it. I decided that I'd just put the zip in straight, rather than playing around trying to get it to fit in to the waist. I also decided to change over to an invisible zip, although I'm not entirely sure why as it's a shorter zipper. So I unpicked all my darts from the front, put small shoulder pleats in at the back to make sure the neckline was even, and draped it back over my mannequin.

My thought then was maybe I could make the dress so it was fitted at the front but hung loose at the back. So I did a first run of pinning the front in again, and tried it on. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work. I had pinned the front darts in higher so it was better fitted, but there wasn't enough fabric for it to give the loose effect I wanted at the back. And honestly, I'm not sure this idea could have worked, because trying to keep one half loose while the other half is tight is just too complicated. I'd contemplated using ribbon ties from the underarm to the back, but I really don't think it would have sat evenly at all.

I hadn't sewn anything for that second arrangement, so there wasn't any more unpicking to do, but by this stage it was Thursday night and I was a bit at a loss of what to do. My next thought was to make separates, with a cropped top and high waisted skirt. The lace at the bodice would be long enough to work as a cropped top, but I decided against this idea because I really don't think I'd wear the top. And given the neckline was the first decision I'd made when I saw the fabric and was the one element I was happy with, I didn't want to lose that on a garment I wouldn't wear. So I discarded that idea.

Then I finally worked out what to do.

It's an obvious realisation, but if your mannequin doesn't have the exact same measurements as you then pinning and draping a fitted dress completely on the mannequin isn't going to end up fitting properly. The answer, of course, was to pin the dress directly onto myself. So I put it on and folded in two darts for the front and two for the back and pinned them in place. I stitched them down, leaving them open at the bottom so they have a soft pleated effect. And after all of that messing around, mid-morning yesterday I finally had the dress I'd pictured in my head.

Then it was just a case of taking some pictures and sending them in as my entry. 

And so that's the saga of my lace LBD. With persistence, sometimes you can manage to pull of the image in your head. Now I just need a reason to wear it!

The Little Mostly-Black Dress

I know the 'Little Black Dress' is meant to be a standard of a woman's wardrobe, but I must confess it's not something I've really owned before. I'm far too much of an all the colours all the time person. So it's actually taken me a good four years from planning to make this LBD to finally getting around to doing it. Partly because I'm not really a wearer of refined or grown-up clothes, and I don't tend to make anything formal-ish unless I have somewhere to wear it. But when I heard about Canberra Frocktails, I decided it was time to get this made. I had meant to take at least a couple of photos at frocktails but guess I was having too much fun because I didn't get around to pulling out my camera.

Frocktails is a brilliant idea dreamt up by some Canberran sewists to have a get together, dress up, have some drinks, stroke each others' outfits, and talk about sewing and stashes without having other people think we're weirdos or tell us that having overstuffed drawers full of fabric is a sign of a hoarding problem. I'm not sure about others, but I find sewing can be a bit of a solitary activity, so it's nice to meet with fellow sewists and be part of a group who share your obsessions. And the frocktails ladies were all lovely and cool - because sewing is an obsession of choice for lovely, cool, creative people!

So, the dress. Unfortunately I don't remember what the fabric is, other than it's not a natural fibre. It's got a satin backed finish, is a two way stretch, is mid-weight and fairly structured, and the brown floral vine is printed onto the fabric, not woven or dyed into it, but beyond that I have no idea. I am trying to be better at remembering exactly what type of fabrics I buy but there are still some in my stash like this one that I have no real idea about. 

As well as having owned the fabric for almost four years, I've had this pattern for about the same amount of time. It's a vintage A-line dress, Simplicity 5920. The pattern dates from 1965 and definitely has a 60s feel, but it's not a costumey vintage pattern, so it's a very wearable dress. This dress is also one of my makes for the 2015 vintage pledge challenge from A Stitching Odyssey, for which I've decided to make six vintage patterns. 

Sadly I couldn't get it to show up well in the photos, but the dress has an interesting front construction. There are three pieces to the front of the dress, a curved triangular central panel which starts just below the centre of the bust, and a seam joining the two front side pieces at the centre of the neck. The bust darts are basically french darts except they end about an inch before the side seam. 

The pattern is a size larger than I normally wear, so I had tried to cut it in a little slimmer to make a better fit. But this fabric, being a little heavier, was hard to cut right in narrow on the pattern so when I had it sewn up it was a bit loose from the waist up. Luckily it's pretty easy to adjust for the slight looseness - I'm pretty straight from underarm to waist so I've dealt with this issue pretty frequently. I extended the bust darts up so they end almost in line with the centre panel and sewed straight up from the waist to the armscye and the fit was much better. 

I ended up having to hand sew in the zipper and hand finish the facings because my machine and the black thread I have are currently not really on speaking terms. After having the fabric snap three times when I tried to put in the zip I admitted defeat and put it in by hand. Although it's slower and sometimes frustrating, I do like finishing facings by hand because it does give a cleaner look. Although it did mean I was up to the wee hours the night before heading down to Canberra so that I could get it finished off before leaving.

Overall, I'm quite happy with this dress. It's fairly simple and classic, and I've finally done my duty as a grown woman of owning a LBD, even if the dress is also covered in brown floral vines (I can't be expected to have a normal LBD, now can I?). But even more I'm so glad to have gone along to frocktails and met all the amazing other sewists.