If I had to describe the process of making this dress in one word, that word would be “meh.” Cutting the fabric was a bit of a nightmare because it kept shifting around on me. I’ve never run across that with linen before, but this is only my third linen project, so I maybe I just got lucky prior to this. I thought I did an okay job cutting despite the shifting, but as I started to get things sewn together, I realized I didn’t. I had some weird puckering on one of the side pieces of the bodice front when I picked it up that was nonexistent when my bodice was laid flat on my ironing board. I kept trying to figure out if something went wrong easing it in, but I finally accepted that the piece was slightly off-grain. And as I sewed together some of my skirt panels, I began to notice that they were slightly off-grain, too. At that point I decided to just skip the sleeves and get the thing done the best I could.
Overall, it’s an okay dress. I sewed the size 12 with the D cup pieces. The fit through the bust and waist is great, and linen outer fabric and lightweight cotton lining make the dress feel amazing when I’m wearing it. After I took these pictures, however, I noticed something was up with the neckline. I had been so fixated on the bust, I didn’t even notice until now. I needed to make the shoulders less sloped, which is a modification I’ve never needed to do before. In fact, I’ve had to do the opposite! Making the shoulder angle less dramatic would have made my neckline lay flatter as well as the shoulders and back. Oh, well! I’ll probably wear it as much as any other dress, despite its flaws. It just feels really good on.
Since the dress wasn’t going that great, I decided that I might as well experiment a bit with the hem. I did a rolled hem using my rolled hem foot which I’ve previously only used on my linings. This fabric was too bulky at the seams to get a consistently rolled edge all the way around, so after I did my first pass, I switched the rolled hem foot for a basic foot, turned my rolled hem up once, and sewed that. It made a nice narrow hem and hid all of the oddities of my first pass. I’m really happy with the way that turned out and will likely do it again in the future.
Leave a Reply