Halloween Dress FAIL
Well I’m not Super Woman and I sure as heck am not Wonder Woman (amazing movie BTW). I just have to say this dress has yet to leave my sewing studio due to the fact that I have YET to master the art of hemming thin jersey material. I’ll explain a bit more later on in this post.
So I had originally purchased this Telio Dakota Jersey Knit Print fabric to create a wrap dress that I had swore up and down that the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate, wore in the past however I could not find such dress to save my life. With my original plan deflated I quickly realized that I was in need of a Black or White cocktail dress for a Halloween event that I will be taking part in on the 28th of October.
A lot of times when I am stuck on trying to make a decision about how to use the material I often lean towards draping the material on one of my mannequins. It was my favorite pass time as a little girl and now it helps solve my sewing problems.
After a little bit of messing around with the material I remembered that I had McCalls M7313 Pattern on hand that would work well for the pattern. I just wanted to make it a little different by adding a piece of material that defined the waist.
To achieve this look I had to do a little bit of pattern hacking. I began by shortening the length of the bodice so that when the waist band would actually hit me at the waist.
To assemble the dress I used my trusty dusty Brother Lock 1034D serger to assemble the inner seams with a 4 thread stitch. I wanted it to be extra secure so that nothing would fall apart on me in the middle of an event. (Yes that’s happened before.)
Everything was assembled beautifully, everything fitted like a dream and sleeves were attached, that’s when my little world of sewing fell apart.
I’m still learning how to sew with knits, so far the only knit I can successfully work with is ponte knit. Thin jersey material?? FORGET ABOUT IT!! I can not say that there is nothing worse than having a terrible finish to a garment.
The skirt hem was a total flop but I figured I’d suffer with it and then do the sleeves. They ended up much worse. I tried hemming them with my stretch stitch but the edge just keeps rolling up on me. I then though oh perhaps my serger would do the trick. As you can see that was not the case.
So, I am going to continue to research how to work with knits and see if I can resurrect this dress. I have read so far that there is some kind of stabilizer out there for knit hems that can be purchased and that may help for sure. If you have any advice on how to work with knits or any online class recommendations, please feel free to comment on them below.
