Simplicity 1882: The finished dress!

As promised in my fitting post, I am finally going to show you the DRESS!

Pattern: Simplicity 1882, which is an amazing fit pattern. This means this pattern comes with an 1" seam allowance at the side seams and contains some detailed instructions about fitting the dress. The only thing it did not have was a pattern for the lining. So I drafted that by myself after watching the Craftsy class "Underneath it all" by Linda Lee. The lining is by no means perfect as you will see soon, but wearable.

Fabric: I used a poly-cotton for the shell (it is my first flower dress, yeah) and some polyester and anti-static fabric for the lining. And I really had to sew a lining, because when fitting the dress it was clinging like crazy to my legs.

Construction: Was straight forward because I had assembled so may muslins and knew what to do :) There is not much that I can add to my fitting post, so this post will mainly show you some pictures! I planned to add a collar as well, but I needed to redraft it and just couldn't be bothered after all the troubles I had.

The dress features an invisible zipper, which I put in with the help of  Tanias tutorial. 

Zipper - what zipper?

To show off the design lines I added some piping, but unluckily the cotton I picked is a bit stiff and thick and thus I feel a bit like wearing a life belt. But at least, my "food baby" fits. In the next picture, you can see the stiff piping under the bust. I hope that after another wash (with loads of fabric conditioner), the piping will get a bit softer and does not show any more

.

Here I would just like to point out the nice fitting princess seams! I know there are some wrinkles under the arm, but I think these are because of my lining.

I also stitched in a little label that my sister gave me for my birthday. It felt great to put it in :)

The first time I tried to pull up the zipper it caught my lining! Lescha was trying to free the zipper teeth which proofed to be difficult as the dress was on my mannequin and I had tried several times to free the zipper (which made things worse, naturally). But the internet helped! I only used a pencil to "grease" the zipper teeth and was able to pull the zipper don again. I then decided it would be best to handstitch the lining to the zipper to avoid a similar situations whilst wearing the dress! How do you keep your lining out of the zippers reach? Ant tricks? Please let me know.

Another question: How would you stitch your lining to the sleeves seams? I didn't know what to do and also couldn't find any advice on the internet. But I remembered I had seen a dress whose armholes + lining had been finished with bias tape. I really like the clean finish, but have the feeling that it adds a lot of bulk to the armhole seams. So, if you have any advice, it would be great if you could share it.

Here is a pic from the whole lining. It actually is the dress pattern plus facing. For the facing I used the same stiff cotton as for the piping, because I wanted to have a crisp neckline. I only had problems at the bottom of the V, which was difficult to stitch. So next time, I would redraft this V maybe into a little curve to make sewing easier.

The front!

Here is the back - with the shifted lining. It is so annoying that I didn't manage to match these seams. That's why the bottom of this zipper is not smooth either. 

It was my first try making a lining, so it is a bit wonky.

So, I am off to Ukraine now for some well deserved holidays and family visit :) Hopefully the situation will stay calm... Speak to you soon :)

Fitting Simplicity 1882

I have submitted my thesis - after 7 month. My boyfriend jokingly said it was almost like giving birth to a baby. After being scared for four days (because I might have forgotten something), I have started to feel relieved. And I have spent loads of time sewing (more Ladyskater dresses to come!).

Naturally, I couldn't totally abandon my sewing machine when writing up and thus I spend 3 month to fit and sew Simplicity 1882. When putting this post together, I realised that I have too many photos and details to put into one post. So today, I am going to show you my fitting progress and problems that I encountered.

No this was not muslin No 1, probably No 4 or 5? I just included it so you have an idea how the whole dress might look like.

I planned to make this dress already in autumn from a fabric that I had bought in Brighton (fabric stash: one down, yeah). But I was scared by the princess seams. This uneasy feeling about princess seams turned out to be justified, as it took me SEVEN (!) muslins to fit the bodice of this dress.

Fitting: As you might have guessed after so many muslins - a nightmare! It took me 3 month (with breaks) to fit and another 2 weeks to sew the dress. The main problems were:

- my apex was 3 cm under the apex of the pattern: Can you see the red line on the photo below? That's were the apex is supposed to be, but because mine is so low there is far to much fabric (around 2"). I ended up fixing this problem with the help of the "Fit for real people" book - I shifted the apex 3 cm down and then actually had to do a full-bust adjustment. But it helped :) (it took me only 3 muslins to get it right)

I actually never realised that my bust is this low :( Are your apexes really are at the underarm seamline?

- apparently I have square shoulders: Can you see the massive wrinkle on my left side and also the puckering neckline in the photo below? Although you can't see it here, but there were also little "suns" (loads of wrinkles) radiating from my shoulder bones. This meant that I have square shoulders. I was really surprised, because I didn't know.

But after several attempts I was able to minimize this fabric pulling by adding a strip of fabric at the shoulder seam: the dots show the middle of my shoulder and as you can see I added a big strip of fabric. This in turn meant I had to make my sleeve cap bigger, which I did with the help of this tutorial from the Threads magazine. (If you ever need to make your sleeve cap smaller, I also tried and liked this one from Sallioh.)

- prominent shoulder blades were also in the mix: Can you see the little sun on my shoulder blades? I tried to fix this by adding a strip of fabric that started in the dart and finished at the shoulder seam.

- the sleeves were pulling: I fiddled a lot with the sleeves because I really wanted them to be perfect. I always have the problem that they are contorted because of my forward shoulder adjustment. I don't have a really good picture for that problem (although there are some diagonal wrinkles in the pictures below), but you can see it on my latest Ladyskater dress as well. Luckily I found this amazing tutorial by Heather and it helped to solve this problem.

I also realised that the bodice has to be fitted differently when wearing sleeves! Sleeveless, I would have been done much earlier, but the square shoulder problem only showed after setting in the sleeves. The fit is much better now, but my arm movement still feels a little bit restricted when I try to put the arms toward the front.

I actually only fitted the bodice and not the waist band or skirt. Although I had to make minor corrections to the top half of the waist band because of changes I made in the bodice. But luckily, I didn't need to make a muslin for that.

So I am just leaving you with this sneak peek preview and you have to be patient until you can see the whole dress (which will not be long)!

Pattern Fitting, Part 1

Last week I attended the Fit And Sew The Perfect Shift Dress class taught by Mandy of Fit2Sew. The class was mid-week and I was the only student. Which was perfect for me, as I got Mandy's full attention and help.

We were going to make Butterick pattern 4386, view B which has a big white collar and a bow tie. But because I wanted to have an everyday dress, I decided to sew version E. The dress has an invisible zipper at the back, two bust darts and two long waist darts at back and front.

I am going to make version E (blue dress).

My main fabric is a cotton lawn from Liberty (copy print), which I bought on Goldhawk Road (London) for £7/meter. I choose to add a lining as the lawn is sheer. The lining is a silk cotton blend, £4/meter. I bought matching thread and a 22" invisible zipper.

Fabrics :)

According to my high bust measurement, I needed pattern size 10. Mandy had already traced the pattern pieces for me, so that we could go straight to fitting. I made the following changes on the tissue:

Back Bodice:

• moved the shoulder seams forward to account for my sloping shoulders
• made a little tuck at the neckline, as the neckline was gaping
• added some tissue at the waist and hip area and pinned according to my shape (which is flat and not curvy as in most patterns)
• took out some tissue at the upper back to account for my sway back

Front Bodice:

• moved the bust dart down as it was pointing above my apex
• shortened the waist dart on both ends, as the top end was pointing above my apex and the bottom end was just too long
• added some tissue to waist and hip area

Puh, that were a lot of changes. And the dress is only semi-fitted! What am I going to do, if I ever make a fitted dress? I was a little bit worried, that I would not remember how to alter the pattern, but all of the changes are described and drawn in the "Fit for real People" book by Palmer/Pletsch.

Next, I cut the fabric! Without making a muslin first - that was scary. The cotton lawn was quickly cut, but I did not have experience with cutting silky fabrics! The silk cotton blend was slipping around a lot, but with a lot of patience we managed to align the selvages. To help with the cutting and avoid slipping we put some tissue paper in between the two layers of silk cotton. Then pinned the tissue pattern on top of that sandwich and cut all three layers (silk-tissue-silk) together. It was still slippery, but doable.

As both fabrics are really thin, Mandy advised me to make an interlining, for which main fabric and lining are sewn together. I sewed my cotton lawn and silk cotton together with a stitch length set to 3 and approximately 3/8"  from the edge.

In the next picture you can see the bodice front to which I attached the interlining. For an even distribution of the lining, you have to start stiching in the middle and then sew to the right or left and down to the hem. The lining was not attached to the hem at this stage.

Bodice front. Sew in direction of the arrows, 3/8" from the edge.

 
After having attached the lining to bodice backs and bodice front, it was fitting time again. We pinned in the darts and then pinned front and back together. You will need a helper at this point, because Mandy had to pin my back close as we had not inserted the back zipper at this point. I was surprised how well the dress fit already and we had to do only a few changes:

• adjusted the shoulder seams as one of my shoulder is higher than the other
• deepened all darts
• adjusted my waist and hip line by taking in the side seams - that was a good feeling :)
• because my right side is smaller than the left (scary), we had to take in more fabric there

The last task of the day, was to sew in an invisible zipper. I was especially interested in this technique as the invisible zippers I have sewn in so far look bulky and make the fabric stand out. So, not really invisible! The technique we used and the techniques I used before differed only in one point: We ironed the coil of the invisible zipper flat only after we had basted the zipper to the fabric with a normal zipper foot (the techniques I read about recommend to iron the zipper coil open before attaching it to the fabric). Then we used the invisible zipper foot to properly attach the zipper. And the result? Yes, it looks for sure better than the ones I tried myself. Let's see how it will look on the finished dress!

Can you spot the zipper? ;)

So, that's it for part 1! Eight hours hard work and I fitted the pattern, cut out fabric and lining, attached the lining and sewed in an invisible zipper. I think we made really good progress and I feel more confident in the Palmer/Pletsch approach (so confident, that I started immediately to fit the Hawthorne dress from Colette Pattern for the sew-along!). I think the most tricky part in the fitting is to actually spot, what the problem is! I, for example, did not know that I have sloping shoulders until Mandy pointed it out. Also it would be great to have a fitting buddy, as it is quite difficult to do some of the alteration yourself. But, I do think that with more experience I will be alright.

This week, I will have the second part of the class which is all about sewing! As a homework, I had to sew in the darts (done, yeah) and then we are going to attach the sleeves, facings and hem.

PS: I used an overlocker for the first time in this class and love it! It is so fast - scary fast - just amazing. I know what will be on my Christmas list this year, hihi...

Just one more sentence: Mandy did not asked me to write a review.