Hundreds of Apples dress

Here it is, my first project all semester!  Sorry about the lateness, I know in my next post I said I'd post this the next day.  I've been waiting for a day when this horrible forehead acne breakout I've been having settles down, but it doesn't look like it's going to, so I'll just go with it!

I'd been eyeballing this material at Spotlight for a while, but for months and months and months it was on the $15 a metre table, and I decided that even though I love it, I don't love it quite that much!!  These last holidays, when I was doing A Christmas Carol, we were actually there for another reason entirely and I spotted my apple material on sale for $5 a metre - so of course, I just HAD to have it!

I also had McCall's M6503 sitting around in my pattern stash, and I have been itching for another dress in this style, so it was a match made in heaven.  Interesting story: I was going to time how long this dress took me, but I realised when it took me three hours to cut out the pattern and the material and mark it all that the figure was going to be ridiculously huge!!

I made view D, with the standup collar, pleated skirt, and sleeves.  I also added piping along the lines of the collar and the waistband, which was an adventure - I've never done that before, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!  I got little wooden buttons to close the front of the dress, but I'm not entirely sold on them - what do you think?  I've been considering switching them out for some self-cover buttons with red satin, to go with the piping, but I think that might be a bit TOO matchy.

I even did some tricky stuff at the junction of the collar - though I tried to be all artsy with my photo and it didn't turn out properly...

I'm really proud of how the inside turned out, although it is a bit of a mish-mash of seam finishing techniques - both proper ones and ones I sort of made up as I went along!  The right side is all french seamed, including the pocket - I tried this tutorial that I found on Pinterest, and it worked wonderfully!  The pocket pattern was borrowed from Butterick B5317, which I've used three times to make (as yet unblogged) dresses for myself and my sisters.  The pocket is only on the right hand side, because I only usually use the right pocket in my dresses/skirts - though it would be good to have it on the other side too!  Does anybody know how to add a pocket to a seam with an invisible zipper in it?

The left side has this strange sort of seam finish that I sort of made up myself - it's kind of like Hong Kong seaming I think, except it's done with double fold bias tape that I just folded over the edge and stitched once.  Anyway, all of the edges are tucked in, so that's nice.
The shoulder seams are done in a similar way, and then stitched down pointing towards the back.

I used the same technique for the sleeve/armhole edges as I did for my Style Print dress, flat felled around a curve.  This time I had a bit of trouble making the edges sit properly, so I basted the seam twice - once straight after I had trimmed the inside (bodice) edge to half its size, I folded the sleeve edge over to the seam line, and once basting it into its final position.  I then sewed the seam on the machine as usual, and removed the basting, and it worked perfectly!

The only change I made to the pattern was to make an 8 at the shoulders/bust tapering out to a 10 at the waistline and skirt, which seemed to work perfectly!  Anyway, that's about all of note for this dress, so have a lovely day and thank you for visiting!

My Strawberry, Style Print, Sew Grateful dress

So, after a lot of build-up on my blog, here is the finished product!  I am so happy with how it turned out, and with my first go at making a belt and belt loops.  Although some of the eyelets are a bit wonky, it does the job and looks absolutely lovely.

The pattern that I used, as you are all probably sick of hearing by now, is Style Print 1283, which I won in a giveaway from Debi over at My Happy Sewing Place - also the host of the Sew Grateful week!

(Just like the pattern cover... except not!)

As you can see, I made view A, with the full skirt and short sleeves.  I also added four belt loops (just a 1 inch strip of material folded into quarters lengthways and stitched down... probably not the best way to do it but it works!) attached at the bottom of the waist darts on the front and back, to make sure they were evenly spaced.  Next time I decide that I want to attach belt loops onto a dress with a full skirt, remind me how INCREDIBLY NOT FUN it is!

I had a lot of fun making this dress, and learned a lot!  It was the first time I've done anything with a collar, which came together a lot more easily than I was expecting.  I had a play with more flat-felled seams, and used them on the shoulder seams, the seams closing the bottom of the sleeves (not sure what these are called), and then decided that I wanted to put them on the arm-hole seams as well!  So that was incredibly fiddly, but I think it worked out well - and now it looks so beautiful on the inside!

In other news, I found out that the machine I have been using has a blind hemming foot, so I used that to do them hem of the skirt and the sleeve hems, and it looks lovely - except for where the machine decided that it would be a good idea to take a navy blue stitch straight through the centre of a red strawberry.  But I think I am the only one that will be looking that closely at the hemming, so it doesn't particularly matter, not that there's much I can do about it aside from hemming all 3m of the skirt by hand.

In regards to the skirt, I took 3 inches off before cutting the material, and then an extra half inch again (in addition to the 2 inch hem that the pattern called for) to take this skirt to a mid-knee level.  I think if I was to make this  again, I might take a further half inch or inch off, just so it's a tiny bit shorter.

I also rearranged the buttonholes slightly to accommodate 3 buttons, the same as Debi did in her versions (view A with full skirt, view B with straight skirt), rather than the two that the pattern called for - I get a bit paranoid about the gaps between buttons gaping unflatteringly, which has happened to me with a couple of my work blouses!

(I painted my nails navy blue for this week, and when I messed up one of my ring finger nails, I decided to try to use my feeble art skills to paint a strawberry - do you think it was a success?  Also, my sister the photographer says it's very hard to take close up photos with some sort of light in summer - the sun's either overhead or set!)

I didn't make any other adjustments to the fit of this one.  Because of the era that this pattern is from, the bust darts do give a bit of a 'pointy-boob' look, designed to be worn with a bullet bra.  However I didn't feel confident enough to mess around with the darts, so I just left it.  The slight looseness of the bodice combined with the busy print means that the slightly odd fit around the bust isn't particularly noticeable.

Overall, this was a lovely lovely pattern to work with, and I'm so glad I got to make this dress!  My sister is currently working on a version of her own, so hopefully that'll appear on here at some point in the future.  Debi, thank you so much for sending me this!  I'll try to find it a lovely new home when the time comes - maybe next Sew Grateful week! :)

Fun photos to finish - this dress is very good for spinning in!  Also, the dogs like to 'help' with photos, mostly by putting white hair all over my dress and bringing my spitty, muddy tennis balls to throw.

Thanks x 1000 go to my sister, for taking photos of me in the exotic location of the back veranda, on the first sunny day all week!