Another Rayon Peasant Dress

I made a peasant dress from rayon (from the generous friend's relative's destash) in March, and have worn it a lot more than I expected, even discovering that it layers nicely over a turtleneck in winter.  So, when the last visit to the craft thrift store turned up three yards of 56" wide rayon, I got it with the express intention of making another peasant dress.

This style of dress gets all of its shaping from elastic, is extremely comfortable to wear, and looks terrible on the hanger.

The main thing that drew me to this fabric was the fact that it was a lot of rayon, but I was also very amused that it has the same basic purple-green-black color scheme as the other "a lot of rayon" that I used for the previous peasant dress.  This print's a bit more restrained, inasmuch as colors like 'chartreuse' and 'bright mauve' can be considered restrained.

As far as construction goes, almost everything written about the other rayon version applies to this--the biggest difference is that I left the white thread in the serger.

Well, OK, actually, I guess the bigger differences come from the fact that I had less of this fabric than I had of the previous fabric, and that prompted some deviations in how things were cut.

There wasn't enough contiguous fabric left, after cutting the front, back, and sleeves, to make continuous bias, so I had to cut as many 2" wide strips as I could, then sew them together piece by piece.  I needed about 4 yards of single fold bias tape, and managed to make about 4½ yards.  It helped when I realized that the print had a distinct diagonal element, so I could use scissors to cut along aspect of that, instead of having to use the rotary cutter.

And the hem ruffle is made on the cross grain, and not very full at all.  I used the (roughly) quarter inch hem roller to finish the ruffle, and I probably could have skipped the ruffle and finished the lower edge of the dress with the hem roller.  Th ruffle ads a little extra something, though, even if, in this case, what it adds is mostly "this is cross grain so won't drape right."

The rayon pressed beautifully, both in making the bias tape and in turning up the sleeve hems.

I did a terrible job thread tracing the guide for the waist elastic casing, but, once the elastic was in and it gathered...well, if it's uneven, it's not obvious.

Of course there are pockets.

No picture of the back, because it's so similar to the front (just a tad higher at the neckline), but here's another picture of the fabric, and that nice, heavy-but-breathable rayon drape.