Miri's Lacy Dress

The Dress (sorry about the horrible photo quality, it was nearly midnight, taken on her phone). 

Having chosen the pattern (Simplicity 4070) and agreed on modifications, off we went to Spotlight, where we were able to buy fabric in comparative harmony.  Miriam chose a cerise faille for the main part of the dress, and black chantilly lace for the top of the bodice.  I had some black taffeta suitable for lining already, so with a  zipper and some thread we paid the princely sum of $34.

First of all I washed the fabric.

I made a toile of the bodice so I could get that fitted correctly, which only took about 15 fittings, unpicking, unpinning, summoning – “Miriam, don’t go too far away, you have to be here when I want you!” (That’s often an issue – she wants fitted dresses but isn’t around for them to be fitted at the time I want to sew).  When I was happy with the fit of the toile I unpicked it and recut the pattern pieces using the adjusted toile as a guide.  Two points:

• It’s better to make something too big than too small – you can always take it in, recutting is a much bigger job and wasteful.
• The purpose of a toile is just to get the fit right, so it usually isn’t made in fabric anybody would want to wear.  However, I hate to waste the effort so if possible, I also make it up into a garment.  In this case, I used some cotton from my scrap bag, which I thought was quite a pretty floral but Miri just said “Yuck, its pastelly and so ‘90’s!”  Well, she’s wrong – its ‘’80’s, and I think I can change her mind, - I have a design for a summer top in my head.

The back of the dress (photo was taken by her very tall boyfriend, hence the angle...)

I interfaced the bodice lining with a soft iron on woven fabric, not Vilene which is sometimes too stiff.  I just wanted a bit of body, although in retrospect I perhaps should have put boning in the bodice.  I was depending on the interfacing, the close fit and the lace upper bodice to hold the bodice up wrinkle-free.  A last minute fitting availability problem arose and the lacey bit turned out to be a little big – OK, but not tight enough to support the bodice properly (or cover the bits of bra best not seen).  Fixing it will be easy, I just have to take it up at the shoulders and redo the neck and armhole edges, which are only overlocked.  The other challenge was getting correct placement of the lace scalloping, which was harder than I thought.  I used another pattern for the neckline, I wanted something rounder – although the picture on the front of  Simplicity 4070 shows a round neck, the pattern neckline is actually shallower and wider than I wanted.

I mistakenly assumed that the skirt would fit OK.  I cut it size 14 on the principle of it’s easier to take things in, but in fact even size 14 was too small, and Miri is usually size 10-12ish in the hips.  The pattern is supposed to have lovely big, loose pleats but when I pinned them, the waist would have fitted a 10 year old, so I had to gather instead.  I could have recut the skirt (using the existing pieces) lower down which would have made the piece shorter and wider but I was running out of time and patience.  The lining, which was a skirt without pleats was also a bit tight.  Anyway, I’ve put a note in the pattern envelope so that if I make that dress again, I’ll be reminded that I need to allow extra width for the skirt.

I guess it’s easy to focus on flaws, but I was disappointed that she had to wear it with the bodice not 100%, and I do think the pleats would have looked nicer.  Otherwise it was a good result – I didn’t even have that much trouble getting the invisible zip in, I only had to unpick it about twice! (Not my best thing).