Dragon Mix

I have a friend who expressed interest in a few aspects of clothing that I realized, hey, those loose dresses I've been making for me?  Would probably work for them.

So I turned to my "these prints coordinate well but I have no idea what to make with them" stash and Simplicity 9153 and made this

The bodice was pretty much all I used from the pattern, but I did take inspiration from the longer, tiered view


and of course I used the pocket piece

Dragons!  That;s the print I coordinated everything around.

 Construction was straightforward, and I decided to stitch twice around the neckline and teh sleeve hems.

 I serged the seam allowances between each piece of cloth in each tier, as well as the seam allowances where every tier attached to the piece above, and my serger was very uncooperative.  I eventually swapped out the needle thread with something newer, as well as replacing the needle itself.  It didn't seem to help but I stayed stubborn and finished the project...and then the next project that involved the serger went absolutely without incident.

Partly because of the serger crankiness and partly out of laziness, I decided that I did not want to serge the lower edge to provide a visual cue for how much to turn it up as I sewed the hem, and I did not want to measure and press all of it.  Instead, I dug into my sewing machine doodads and found a ¼"ish rolled hem attachment that bolts to the sewing machine bed.

I thought I had uses this thing before, but now I can't imagine that I did because I love it so much.  (It's also entirely possible that the last time I tried to use it was before I started using the 1/16" rolled hem foot, which I remember had a steep learning curve to not make an absolute mess every time I used it--it still gets messy sometimes, if my attention wavers...)


 And it turned out nicely!  Not perfect, but who's gonna scrutinize it?

And then I bundled it into a box and sent it along with something else (that the friend was expecting.)  There were many exclamations made.  Even if the friend never wears it, the reaction was enough for me.