A Quick and Easy dress
As in I needed a break from all the hand finishing woven fabric requires!
Pattern: New Look 6936, knee length with the flutter sleeve
Fabric: 1/2 yd remnant of leopard print cotton jersey and 1 & 1/4 yds of black cotton jersey. To make it fit, I only cut the front bodice on the remnant so the bodice back is solid black. Here’s a better shot with my son where you can see the back of the sleeve.
The remnant was a lighter weight and didn’t behave on my standard machine, but the other worked beautifully. The v-neck stretched out a bit, so I made my first attempt to use clear plastic elastic to fix it. Ugh.
The neckline went from saggy baggy elephant to properly sized ripply mess. This is the best shot I could get of the ripples. I have never sewn with clear plastic elastic, but I have read a blog post or two about it. I tried to sew it up like its white old-school cousin. I taught my son’s sleeping subconscious a few choice words during this process. I should also mention that I didn’t read any tutorials on how to do this. I was a little disgusted because the entire dress was finished, hem and all, when I went back to add this stuff in. Luckily my husband assured me no one would notice, so I took a deep breath, put down the seam ripper and called it done.
Another fun fact: Other than length adjustments at the hem, I made no alterations to this pattern tissue! I made a straight 18 and it worked. Happiness! The biggest change was adding a back facing (and in retrospect I should have tried one on the front too). I’ll post a “how to make facing the easy way” tutorial soon.
Oh this is swanky! I think I need to take a better look at this pattern- much envy!
=) Thanks! and I love that you used the term “swanky”!
Sewing necklines in a jersey fabric is always a challenge. I always use a strip of jersey cut on the straigh-grain as an edging – about 3 cm wide; then folded in half lengthwise and pressed. I generally cut them 1 inch shorter than I want them to be and ease in the neckline allowance, stitching right sides together. It works beautifully and I don’t have to mess with clear elastic. I like the contrasting back bodice and sleeves. Clever! And you look like you’re having a good time!
thanks for the tip, I will have to try that next time. And thanks for the compliments! We were listening to karaoke! At least until my son decided it was bedtime. My hubby and I felt all adult-like for an hour or so!