Saturday 30 September 2017

There Is Nothing Wrong With Another Shiftdress

This autumn I am really concentrating on sewing practical clothes, aka office wear. The summer is now officially over, I moved all my summer dresses in the back of my wardrobe and brought the mid-season ones. And only then I found out that many of my main wardrobe hangers remained free. I am still resisting on bringing the wool winter clothes, which might explain that, but in the meantime, the immediate reaction was clear: "must sew a new dress".

So I obeyed and here it is. The fabric is one of the first coupons I bought at the very beginning of my sewing career, almost four years ago, it is a dark grey cotton sateen with tiny white and red squares. Back then I sewed a skirt from it, but the fabric creases a lot which means that I did not wear it as much as I would have liked.
This time, I interfaced the dress body with the cotton-silk voile which always works magic. It adds little bit of body and avoids some creasing. (I tried silk organza first but it was too crisp which is not what I wished for). I had a remnant of blue cotton-silk and since the dress is anyhow lined, I used that one. I already wore this dress to the office and it looked rather good at the end of the day.
The interfacing helped a lot. Also, I could do a lot of catchstitching to the voile (side seams, pockets, even the darts).
The pattern is Newlook 6145, already sewn twice - here and here. This time, I promised myself to add pockets and lining; I was too lazy the last time and I seriously regretted it. Since the pockets are catchstitched to the skirt, they become very invisible.


This time, I wanted to change the pattern little bit and added the sleeve ruffles. The original idea was to add two of them, but when trying it on, I think the one is sufficient - the sateen has some stiffness, just enough for the effect.

The dress is lined on the dress body, not on the sleeves, because again, my last version was nice, but unlined it moves up or sticks to my legs when walking. Hopefully, this new dress will be worn between now and the start of winter, mainly with tights.

The dress was sewn rather quickly - I did some preparation and sewing during the week and focused my Saturday to finish it. I know that it is a T&T pattern and the cotton is not a huge challenge, but I am very pleased with the little details like nicely set-in sleeves, perfectly sewn lining, the ruffles etc.

2 comments:

  1. J'aime beaucoup les petites manches volantées, ça donne une petite touche fantaisie à cette robe par ailleurs très sage (et très jolie!)

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  2. Merci, c'est ma version favorite

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