Tuesday 31 March 2009

Wavy Edge Dress

For the wavy edge dress I took the basic block, made a copy on some more horrible dirty-pink cotton and modified it slightly. I brought the shoulders in a bit and made the neckline more open. I pinned it to my fabric and took an extra wide seam allowance - I wanted to thread-baste it as I've been reading about in Couture Sewing Techniques. Thread basting took a while, I think it was worth it as I wanted this dress to be perfect and certainly ironing seams flat was much easier with such a wide seam!
Here you can see the little arrows I stitched for lining up!...all the pieces thread basted and overlocked, with the necks and sleeves with no seam allowance. I extended the line between waist and hips by 12 inches with a wide seam alowance also for the skirt.Here was the 'experiment' piece for machine stitched ribbon (did NOT look neat enough) and the original bottom wavy edge idea. I planned to overlock a more frequent wave then hand sew the fringed wool on. It looked great but I thought I'd better put it in the washer and dryer to see how it stood up. The result was 'surprisingly well' but there was no longer a 'good side' and the fringed wool didn't sit as straight any more :(so...hand attached ribbon edging, machine seams, a side zip, overlocked gentle petal wave bottom edge then hand stitched rolled hem later..... oh, and some fabulous red satin heels ;)


I love it, I'm wearing it right now!

1 comment:

June (planetjune) said...

Your dress is so cute, and you look great in it!