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