preview pic of finished dress
So, despite the fact that I have a large collection of sheets for the express purpose of sewing, I had no idea what to make. Finally decided to chop up a really soft dark green jersey sheet my parents had used. It had some holes and odd faded spots that made cutting a large pattern piece difficult.
Beautiful sheet, right?
I frankensteined a pattern (NewLook 6705, if anyone is interested; it is a good pattern) I had to make the yokes narrower and lengthen the pattern. Hooray for large pieces of paper! And then I cut. I hate cutting cotton, and since I had never worked with jersey before, I was more frustrated than I imagined I would be. After cutting the pieces, I ran to Iowa for 6 days. This is how I made a 1 day project into a 2 week one.
I had decided to do French seams. I know that jersey doesn't fray, but I have a slight obsession with eliminating all raw edges. Hence, I doubled my sewing. I like it anyway. I won't bore you with the pinning, sewing, pinning again, and sewing again. The actual sewing is my favorite part.
Bound off the lower part of the armholes. Not to bad.
Attached the front of the dress to the front yoke. Mmm...gathers. The original pattern called for pleats.
I went on, actually following the pattern instructions, to apply the inside yoke facing. Attaching and topstiching at the neckline wasn't too bad. I like topstitiching, which is why I used black thread. (That, and the fact that I have no green thread.)
And now we enter my least favorite part of the project. When I used this pattern once before, I made a version with sleeves. Well, it turns out that when there are not sleeves, the pattern requires a large amount of tedious turning-under of edges. It is not fun to turn two different raw edges in towards each other. I will say I am proud of the result though since, as per my irrational expectations, there are no raw edges anywhere.
If you've stayed with me this long, you deserve another mediocre final-product picture. And so do I!
And, on a side note. I started another project with more of the sheet. Being a queen, there is a LOT left. I thought this would be an easy way to satisfy my Celtic knot craving, but it isn't as easy as I thought. It's nearly done now, applied to interfacing. I was planning on using it for the back yoke of some sort of flyaway jacket once I cut the interfacing away, but now I can't really decide what to do with it. It wasn't easy, and I want to make sure the finished product looks good. Any suggestions?
