A little over six years ago, I made this dress.
It was one of the dresses I made when I was first starting to figure out sewing after weight gain, and I liked it enough that I kept it once I got things worked out. The gray floral fabric, however, was starting to show loads of wear at the neckline and sleeve/skirt hems. (I had thrifted a large quantity of it, and it was, perhaps, not the highest quality.) I still like the appliqués, so I decided to figure out what I could do to replace all of the threadbare edges.
That these may not have been the best options is irrelevant. What's done is done.
Covering the neckline edge with bias binding was the first idea I had, even before I decided to use this vintage geometric print for the new contrasts.
There is a glimpse of the bat I appliquéd over a hole that had developed in the rose print fabric after a few trips through the laundry. All of the appliquéd fabric was attached without fusible webbing, and with a zigzag width and density I wouldn't choose now, but they've held up well.
When I applied the bias binding in The Halloween Eyesore Dress, I still added facings, for extra stability. The facings in this dress had started falling apart, after the serging had come unraveled in areas, so I first applied the bias binding over everything, then went back and trimmed off the facings, cutting very close to the bias binding. I'm sure more threads will work loose over time, but it's fine. I'll still have scissors.
I took my time and closed the loop of bias with a proper angled seam, and I didn't even have to think very hard about the geometry of it. Weird.
I initially considered covering the sleeve (or, rather, "sleeve") hems with bias tape, too, and that probably would have looked fine. But. I've wanted to try adding proper sleeves to these extended-shoulder types of "sleeves" for a while, so, eh, why not try it here. I figured out where to cut the short sleeves from Fake Burda 6401 to make their top edge be the same as the existing sleeve opening, then constructed those sleeve ends the same as usual and sewed them in.
The result maybe looks a little more like there's another shirt lurking under this bodice. It's fine.
Since the original dress was made when I was still taking the time to cut the skirt as a gathered A-line, I couldn't just rip off the bottom and sew on a new piece. I used the ruler and chalk to mark 10" up from the hem edge and cut there. I thought of cutting the new contrast in a curve to match the A-line (which is what I used to do with this pattern a lot), but, one, the vintage geometric fabric was--just barely!--not wide enough to do that without an obvious seam, and, two, I didn't wanna.
I ripped two selvedge-to-selvedge 11" long pieces, then as much at 11" wide as I could from the area next to where I cut the bias piece. (I ended up with a lot of triangles left over from this project.) That gave me a ruffle that was not very much longer than what it would be sewn to, which The Halloween Eyesore Dress also showed me was something that worked well on the end of an A-line.
Of course I couldn't leave it at that easy.
I've been wanting to experiment with inserting lace, so, why not here.
I ripped the fabric pieces width-wise before sewing them into long strips, and then immediately serged the bottom of the upper piece and the top of the lower piece, to make it easy to tell which way was up and keep the print going in the same direction. Not that anyone would ever notice if it wasn't. I aligned the serging with the center f the lace motif and stitched through the upper part in as close to a straight line as possible while still staying on the lace. Then I folded the serged edge up and over and stitched through that new folded edge from the back, which also caught the the points of the lace. I also did this for the lace applied to the hem area.
Since I was applying the lace while the ruffle was still flat, I left the ends unsewn, to go back and stitch everything down after the loop was sewn closed. I tried to keep the lace motifs intact for the parts with nothing behind them. That didn't go so well.
I applied the top-most lace after the ruffle was gathered (I managed to set the ruffler just right on the first try!) and attached. I did not deal with making the fabric under it open, and I did not deal with trying to make the ends fit smoothly together, although, looking at it now, it might have been possible to finesse the higher edge into being lower.
I had been hesitant to set the iron on this trim, because I didn't trust that it was actually cotton. It's a little odd feeling and looking--it was a Deb's Lace purchase, and, looking at the picture, I honestly wasn't sure if it was even actually cluny like the listing said. There were several instances, on the Deb's Lace site, of things labeled "cluny" that were visibly cluny-style raschel. I could tell this wasn't raschel, but it had an odd thick quality that made it seem off for cluny. I still took a chance and ordered 50 yards of it! And they sent 60! And it was cluny! Weird thick cluny. I assumed it was synthetic, or a blend; I finally did a burn test today and, wow, it's been a while since I burned anything that was so clearly 100% cotton. Very fine ash. Soooooo now there's a high possibility it might shrink in the dryer.
But that is an issue for the future--now it was done!
Ha ha no.
I tried it on and thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to have another floral appliqué down where the new ruffle starts." And then I remembered that I did still have some of that particular floral fabric, with the remaining intact roses already cut out to be appliqués on another (indeterminate future) project. One of them was smaller than I wanted to use here, but the other would work. I used fusible web this time, but tried to recreate the stitching on the original appliqués. And then, when I was doing the zigzagging, and therefore looking much closer at the fabric than I had been when placing the appliqué, I noticed a small, threadbare hole right next to the appliqué. I could have covered the hole by shifting the angle of the appliqué just a bit. So: another bat!
I have had the bat print since 2015, and used a lot of what I had left in the first Halloween Patchwork project, but there's still some left. This might be useful if more holes develop in this fabric.
Nothing spectacular about the back. I might have added that last little rose, somewhere on the bodice back, if the idea of wrestling the dress around while zigzagging weren't so unappealing.
So now it's finished. Until more damage happens that I feel the need to deal with. Unless the gray floral fabric decides to just disintegrate completely. Who knows what the future holds!
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