9/17/2014: Mis-adventures in Simplicity 3833

Prepare for rambles and a lot of pictures.

Remember when I said I was sewing this pattern?

I think I may have been excited about it at the time. The excitement was apparently just a cover up for sadness, weird fit, and pointy bust darts. >:/

Anyway, this dress has been pretty much done for um… maybe a month, minus fixing the arm-hole binding, so I might as well blog away this depressing dress.

So the first problem was that I definitely chose the wrong fabric for this dress. I'm fairly certain that I had some quilting fabric in hand (but still much love for the pattern, I cannot deny, and not itchy, but still quite sturdy). This was a before I discovered the National City Swap Meet so I basically only knew of the local fabric stores… discount fabric it was.

See, cute.

The pattern was easy enough the cut out. I cut a size 12 because that is what I measure to but I definitely had to make some alterations. I am not a fan of facing pieces but I dutifully cut them. Bleh. Alright so for the bodice construction it has these nifty darts that are sewing by piecing the bodice to the skirt. In theory it was great but I don't know how many times I sewed them at different points (no pun intended) of construction but now they are only slightly less pointy than when I started.

In the back, you sew these strange tiny pleat-darts. I am almost not sure of the purpose except to take out a *minimal* amount of extra fabric, unless I did it wrong.

One thing I did learn and I loved how it turned out on this dress was the lapped zipper. I started out by following the directions from the package but quickly diverted to this tutorial by Rosie Wednesday. I followed it mostly, cut she calls for a slight amount of extra fabric which I did not need. 

What makes her method so easy is that you put a piece of masking tape on the fabric to top sew around.

The zip turned out so perfect, it is one of the only things I really like about this dress. I would definitely recommend the tutorial for sewing a lapped zipper though, I will use it again. Once I had the front and back sewn together, I tried for the neck facing….

I was supposed to do a narrow hem but that wasn't happening so I made the mistake of attaching bias binding. And then I didn't clip the curves so it would sit flat because I DON'T READ THE DIRECTIONS. So I ended up with this:

I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it so I just took it of and bound the neck holes and arm holes with pink bias binding (side note: I had to make the neck larger, it was much too tight in the front. Also I did not take into account the seam allowance on the arm holes when I attached the bias binding so I need to reattach them another 1/2" in each… which is why this dress is technically not done).

I took out a lot on each side, I definitely could have cut a size 10. I still don't understand how the make the sizes for patterns. It is like someone drunk has done the measurements.

I finally tried the dress on for my husband and he told me it looked like a "mormon suicide dress." He wasn't really wrong, technically:

I should have just gone from here and shortened it to an acceptable length, but I didn't. I decided to make my life so difficult instead. Inspired by this drop-waisted pleated situation I had seen at the thrift store, I decided to modify the skirt.

SO MANY PINNNNNNNNNS! It turned out ok. I turned my fabric perpendicular because I did not had enough, but I think it looks OK ish.

Also I decided to further torture myself and hand stitch the skirt to the belly/bodice so it would stay upright. Holy crap that shit takes forever.

So to the "finished" product:

It's kind of cute, I guess. Maybe in a different fabric. Although I don't think I would ever make it again because fitting it was such a pain in the ass. I *might* post a picture of myself wearing it once I fix the arm hole bias binding...