Mar 03 2016
Well here it is, my first effort at dressmaking in 6 years (I realised this as I was sewing) I have to say the picture doesn't do it justice, in fact this picture is letting me get away with murder!
The thing about dressmaking, I thought as I was butchering the neckline, is that it doesn't come naturally to me. I tend to botch my way through and often I come away with nothing more than some ruined fabric. When I committed to making a garment a month I'd conveniently forgotten this. But I've soldiered on and something wearable has come out of it!
So, what went wrong and what went right?
Well, for a start I neglected to transfer all the pattern markings, a fact that Alison was so disappointed to hear she insisted that I attend Sewing Patterns Decoded.
Another stumbling block was that I know nothing about sewing techniques or the terminology that comes with it. Luckily there are a wealth of little tutorials on the web to help me through this (future blog post on this!)
Apparently I only have one bobbin and it was already filled with white thread, so I went with it and so some of the stitching stands out like a sore thumb! I had to abandon the elasticated waist after 3 botched attempts at it, I just couldn't get my casing to be wide enough.
Enough moaning about what went wrong, what was nice about this pattern was the fit, I made it a size bigger as I have a tendency to sew beyond the seam allowance and the fit has turned out lovely.
It's a super comfortable dress and with a more upmarket fabric (this one was £1.49 a metre in the Abakhan sale) I think it will be dressy enough for the races. I've also gained lots of knowledge, learning from my mistakes and chewing Alison's ear off about my disasters!
I think what I've made is wearable, so I'm counting it as my January make, but I will try to make an extra garment at some point in the year as it does feel like cheating.
So what do you think?
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