Monday 22 April 2019

Finished version 2 of The Vampires Wife dress - my style 😉


 So here it is at last. My turquoise blue cotton chintz dress.

Its a very nice dress and today I did the finishing touches - sewed the facings down etc.
Its aptly photographed in Rugby Church graveyard lol!

This version is actually overocked on all seams and finished properly. Version one is not. I never expected I would wear that one being floral but actually I probably will.



I do love this. I wore it to town today -hence a few wrinkles when I finally got picture of it due to sitting in the car on the way there. There are some issues I need to look at. Despite this is fits as well as many RTW dresses so I will still wear this. I think it will be a lovely summer dress for work since the skirt length is quite long. Obviously not as long as the Street Sweeper dress I made last time. This version though has the puffed sleeves though as I blogged a few days back they are not yet quite right.







Also there is somethig not quite right about the right shoulder. It is I believe a fault of my own body rather than my pattern and can be fixed - or at least according to Winifred Aldridge it can be adjusted to hide the fact I have one shoulder I believe higher than the other.

I never thought I would care about this kind of pattern tweeking but it would appear I am getting into this now so I will have to investigate how to sort this one out at some point. Right now it is not my priority.

Oh and I fixed my uneven sleeves surprisingly easily - if you read my previous blog post -by adding an extra rows of stitching to each to even them out so both now have 3 rows of stitching rather than just 2 rows. It works.









 What is more important is my arse. Or the way the fabric pulls across it. I suspect I need to let this out a bit. I am not intending to bother if I am honest because it was comfortable to wear and to walk in and I will put up with this but on my next dress I need to try it on a bit earlier.

This time I went with the fact the previous dress I had checked at every stage and it fitted but this time I just sewed and never checked.

I finished it and it looked fine in the mirror. Then my partner took these photos and clearly its not quite right.

To fix this I would have to take off the frill - so two rows of stitching as well as probably needing to re-gather it all, so a further 2 rows to do that. Then rip out the zip and replace it letting it out a bit then replace the frill etc.

No not bothering!

Its a muslin and will do.

If I did all that I will more than likely wreck it and as I said it feels comfortable to wear so stuff that.

I have bought much worse looking RTW and paid loads for them so this is actually not so very bad.

Besides, I felt good when I wore it. Shame about the photos but with a bit of luck Version 3 will be better. So what to do now:


  • I want to add fullness to the sleeve - middle not the top which I think is OK. Pleat the sleeve not gather.
  • Make the skirt back slightly bigger and check it looks OK before I add the frill.
I think I will make a short version next out of a fun fabric I want to wear at the weekend.

Watch this space!

Thanks for visiting and all input about fitting gratefully received.

EDIT: I ended up altering the back of this dress to make it fit better which you can read about here:
https://brackencrafts.blogspot.com/2019/05/alterations-to-my-turquoise-blue.html
Bracken

2 comments:

  1. Hi Bracken,
    I love these dresses, you look fabulous in them. Are you able to make dresses for others? I'd love to hire you to make one like that for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, Thank you so much but no I have not made for others. I would need to be able to actually measure the person. I am not a trained dressmaker so might struggle to make from distance selling with measurements but I do thank you for the interest.

    ReplyDelete