5: Burdastyle dress- Lace Cowl Dress 12/2014 #121

 I made the original purple version of this dress about a year ago when I first got the magazine. The purple one is totally made using a  zigzag stitch. The red lace one is made using a serger with a twin needle hem.

Please excuse the messy house. I was still unpacking when this was taken.

Unfortunately I had the idea it would make a lovely winter dress/top so I made it using two purple IKEA fleece blankets. Also because it has a fancy cut hem I did not need to hem it. At that time I had a machine that struggled with stretch fabrics and this was made using just a zigzag. The final dress looks great but is really not that wearable. Firstly it is not very comfortable and tends to "ride up" possibly because its tight and fleece. It is really good when its very cold because I do not need much on top of it and have worn it in winter over jeans. Generally though the UK is not that cold and so far it is simply too hot to wear it indoors most of the time. Also because its fleece if I wear for example a Tshirt under it when I get hot and try to take it off the Tshirt comes off with it so it is not something I feel comfortable wearing somewhere like to work since I dare not take off my top layer in public!

The burdastyle dress was also made in lacy so maybe that is why it my newer version works so well.
This is the pattern:

Anyway, since I bought this lovely dark red lacey-acrylic stretch fabric from Yvonne at Weston Fabrics, UK, I decided it would be time to have another attempt at this pattern.

I can honestly say I am very pleased with the final garment. I do have a few issues though. Firstly the elastic ruching at the side did not work as well with this fabric as with the fleece which was perfect. It is just not very ruched. If I do another one I will probably put in two cords so I can just ruche it by hand and tie it to where-ever I fancy. Then it would also be adjustable so giving different looks to one garment. Though to be honest I may just not bother with ruching at all if I made this particular design again since I also like it just with a straight side seam. Also I had yellow and green cotton in my Brother sewing machine which I had set up to do twin needle sewing and to be honest having finally sorted out how to do this I was in two minds as to risk un-doing the threads so I was lazy and left them so they do not match the colour of the dress. I thought it would be a contrast but to be honest it was a mistake and I should have changed to a darker coloured thread ideally red so it didn't show as much. Other than this though I love this dress so much. Considering it is lacy and light in weight it also seems quite warm so will be ideal for the next few months. I now need to make some slip dresses to wear underneath with this type of fabric. 
Thanks for reading
Bracken