Colette Moneta

Didn't I say in one of my last posts that my life started to settle after having started a new job and moved into a new flat? I guess I was wrong. Life has taken another excited turn. I got engaged :) You can imagine that I'm the happiest woman ever! 

It also means that I'm having not much time at the weekends (to sew, haha) as I'm trying to find out what you actually need to do to get married. Apart from that there is also the questions if I should sew my own wedding dress? I think as a seam stress I can only answer with YES. I haven't decided on a pattern yet. Luckily there is no need to rush as we are planning to get married earliest next summer. 

But now let's move on to my most recent creation, the Colette Moneta which is a jersey dress.

Fabric: 1.5 meters of lacy jersey. I bought the jersey in Walthamstow market (London) and fell in love with the lace pattern. Unfortunately the quality of the jersey is not very good. You can actually feel that it is low quality polyester. It keeps reminding me of very cheap bath towels. That's why I plunged ahead with this fabric to cut a Moneta before sewing a muslin.

Construction: The assembly was straight forward. I thing it took me longest to assemble and attach the collar (which also was because there was some handstitching involved, see below). The skirt is gathered with an elastic which scared me a bit. Ever since I tried to insert elastic into a leggings waistband 4 years ago (which failed), I'm a bit anxious about elastic. However, you can see that it turned out well. Despite me stretching the clear elastic to the max. Luckily it shrinked back after giving it a good steam.

Fit: I think the overall fit is quite good (as I would expect from a jersey garment), however there are still some fitting issues. I need a square shoulder adjustment. You can't tell from the fit of the bodice on my shoulders, but the collar gave me very obvious signs. It didn't want to stay flat. The edges of the collar were pulled up towards the shoulders causing the collar to roll upwards on the outside. You can't see it in these photos, because I've tagged the collar down with several hand stitches hoping the neckline doesn't need to stretch too much when putting on the dress. So far all stitches are intact.

I attached a little ceramic button at the back and tagged it to the bodice to keep the collar down (you can see the collar pulling on the left), which I think looks really cute.

I've added the pockets that come with pattern, but I'm not sure I will do so again. It's handy to have pockets, but I didn't want them to exaggerate my hips. Thus I used a thin white jersey. But the jersey is peaking out and when wearing the dress I have to check every so often that the pockets stay hidden.

One more thing to change are the shoulders/sleeves, which is totally my fault. The sleeves are too big on me and I have to take them in. When tracing the pattern I made a broad shoulder adjustment by tracing a bigger size above the notches at the sleeves and bodice pattern. I guess I don't need this adjustment for the Moneta and will change it back next time.

One final photo showing you that this dress goes really well with my wardrobe, although I have to admit that's a bit cold for me already to wear three-quarter sleeved garments and cardigans.

Will I make it again? You can expect to see more Monetas on the blog, hopefully soon. I would like to sew the versions with all the different collars and I think there are 6 in total. I'm not calling this a personal challenge, because I'm not having time for any commitments at the moment. So we will see.