January Project

Hello my long lost blog readers! I can’t believe that January and February have both flown buy so quickly.There has been a lot going on in my personal life lately and I’m working on a project currently that I’m hoping to tell you all about in the near future.

I was successful in completing my first project of the year and working on several others throughout these last couple of months!

I am trying to deplete my fabric stash that I told my husband a number of times that I would. So for this month’s make I decided to go with my vogue pattern that I picked up from JoAnn’s for $2 which gave me the perfect excuse to use some of my fabric from Mood. This fabric was a Ecru/Gray Saint James Striped material, aka a grey and white striped jersey. 😉

This Vogue pattern in particular is V1499. It is part of the Vogue Patterns American Designer series and was designed by Anne Klein, whom you can regularly find a JcPenny’s stores. (Love her clothes by the way.)

Over all I would have to say this was a fairly simple dress to make. It’s a fully lined dress (partially cut on crosswise grain) has fitted bodice, cap sleeves, side-front and side-back seams, pleated skirt, and invisible back zipper. I did not follow the directions to a T and had to make some adjustments down the road but I think it turned out very well. I will have to go back and tailor the dress so that the waist line hits on my actual hip.

Once the pieces were cut I was able to sew most of this dress in an afternoon. I made sure to take my time with this because I wanted it to be something that I could add to my wardrobe.

What I did that was different than the instructions was that I assembled the lining as I was assembling the outer layer. I also attached the lining to the outer layer at the neck line. I did follow the directions for the sleeves which I am glad I did. However, because I did not follow the directions exactly I did have to slip stitch the lining to the rest of the dress. i.e. around the arm holes and along the zipper.

Side note: I got the slip stitch idea from another sewing blogger/Instagramer that I follow who also didn’t assemble her outfit 100% in the correct order and ended up slip stitching her lining onto the dress as well in certain areas. So my word of advice is start following other sewers because you will never know what great idea you will find. I was beside myself until I saw her idea.

For the hem I ended up serging the lining shorter than the final length of the outer skirt, just to make life easier, and used a double needle straight stitch on the outer skirt. I also did this because I wanted the layers to float rather than pull each other down to give the dress some life and bounce.

All in all, I’m proud of my January make and I LOVE LOVE LOVE sewing dresses over just tops any day. Crazy, yes I know.

More blog post to come as promised. There has been a lot going on that I am eager to tell you all about.