The dress of doom redeems itself

Now you may be thinking that it was a pretty short month - that I seemingly whipped this up in a fortnight. Actually, to borrow an expression from KBenco, this was "my dress of doom," and it has been sitting on a coat hanger mocking me for months.

I really liked the idea of a fitted sheath dress and when I saw the one in Ottobre magazine (5/11 #15)  I thought it might be quite good for me. I made a muslin in what I thought was crappy fabric but it turned out to be better quality and suddenly I was under pressure to make it work. The fabric was an unfortunate mix of wool and polyester that wouldn't press except under a lot of steam and then the polyester in it warped under the heat. I tried all kinds of tricks to hide the steam damage, including covering the worst of it with an exposed zipper.  When my husband commented that it looked like something you would wear to a funeral I realised I had created something that I would never wear.

And so there it hung on the coat hanger for several months while I thought about what to do with it. One day it just came to me. I sat down unpicked the whole thing, traced a new pattern from it, and threw it in the bin. No remorse or guilt. I had just learned what I needed to learn from it and now it was time to set it free from its wire prison.

And I'm in good company - to quote Karl Lagerfeld, "the most important piece of equipment in my design room is my rubbish bin, because that's where 95% of my stuff goes."

Using the new pattern, I made this dress over the last 2 weeks using some vintage cotton.  Once again I didn't have enough fabric so used a half sleeve, which I think is more flattering anyway. I made a few small alterations - used the v neck from view #17, and gathered the darts to the waist rather than fitting them.

The "v" is actually a nice modest affair, as you would expect from Ottobre, here made more modest by a woolen singlet underneath.

Ottobre 5/11 #15 "the old school teacher dress" 

To get the close fit though the bust I had to use 3 darts. In the interests of fit I am showing a close up although no doubt there's some tradesperson from Target having a good time right now.

the 3 dart FBA

I think I'll try this dress again, in wool as designed, and in a more subdued palate. However, it will have to go to the bottom of the cue, since I have recently won myself some patterns I am very excited about. I won, not one, but two giveaways this week (how lucky is that) from Karin and Suzy .


And while we are on the subject of winning, I am very humbled to have been nominated for 3 blog awards. Humbled because I don't get time to sew much, what I make can only appeal to the tastes of very few people, and this blog is not always a dress of roses. Thank you for nominating me, Elle C, Valerie  and Steph.