Velvet hoody dress - RTW inspired

 
I had an email from a high street company with this dress and I just thought how lovely this is so decided to attempt to copy it.

To be honest I am not really happy with my attempt to copy the original dress, though I am happy with my final dress. 

The reasons? Well the hood is too small for the same look. I did not particularly want the ribbon lacing down the hood like the RTW copy but I would have preferred it went round the neck to meet in the CF which it does not because stupidly I used the hood from Simplicity 1251 which is a pixie dress pattern and I have made it several times before as both dress and top. This is a tighter more fitted dress than those ones.

The main dress was a freebie that landed in my inbox about the same time as the RTW dress. 

 

It was only free for a limited period and only in dutch or german but I realised it would be perfect to make the hoody dress. I opted for the german copy but probably if you have ever made a T shirt and a basic dress you could make with no translating because I never ended up bothering to translate this. Its the first My Image pattern I have used and I have to say everything lined up brilliantly.

I replaced the neck band with the hood and added CF seam allowance to allow for the zip. I used non stretch iron on interfacing to stabilize the zip edge and stop it going wavy. This did work despite I just pinned the overlocked without cuttig anything off just to hold it in place, and never I ironed in case I melted my fabric. 

But this dress was sheer hell to sew up!

It slipped all over the place. The zip has puckers in the velvet on one side and I decided rather than reck the dress trying to unpick it I will live with it.  

I nearly recked the cuffs trying to overlock them on to the sleeve edges and missing bits all the way round as the layers kept slipping apart. In the end carefully cut them off and sewed using a twin needle - not for any particular reason other than it had thread already in it - so used it to baste the cuffs on. I then overlocked it afterwards. 

The result is far from perfect cuffs but at least they are on and don't look too bad. I will know how to do this if I do make a second version of this dress with a bigger hood which I think I probably will once I find some more lycra velvet of the right kind of colour. This was from Ebay and the colour is called aubergine. I looked for red like the RTW verson but the red was £5.99 and the aubergine was £4.19 so I went with that. The seller has since increased it to £5.99 as well so I wonder if I got an unexpected bargain and they had listed it wrong? I bought 3m of this and have enough to also make some flares which I will show you once they are sewn up!

 

I just hemmed the front neck of this as you can see to finish it off where I never had a big enough hood. Its not the end of the world but does prove rather a lack of proper planing when I cut this out!

The zip looks off centre in the photo above. It isn't. I got that bit right. 

These are not the best photos. I had to get them taken in between torrential rain and you can see the problem from this photo which got taken as we ran for cover

So these are all I have for now. 

My idea was to get some photos with my leggings which I think I will wear a lot with this cardigan dress because thats what this is really and also some with tights. That shows the likely versatility of this dress. Due to the rain - I got soaked in seconds - I have yet to take the photos with tights to show this as its really meant to be worn - as a going out dress.

Ah well I am posting now anyway just to show you wat I was up to this weekend. Happy Halloween

Bracken