Oh, hey! A person clothes!

I have been doing doll things, but decided this week that I should sew a dress with some of the coordinating fabrics I picked out the last time I went to the craft thrift store.

While I had picked them with the intent of making another proper Gunne Sax dress, I don't particularly want to wear a proper Gunne Sax dress right now (they have too much waist definition, and I still don't feel like have a waist.)  What I have enjoyed wearing is the babydoll dress I made a few months ago

except

it's just a tiny bit short. So!  I thought I would revisit that same dress design, but...just...an inch or two longer.

 

(and then I took photos fast this morning before wearing the dress for the day, and then discovered that the full-dress photos are all blurry, because I'm still not used to the 50mm lens.  The close-up pictures are sharper!)

As mentioned in the craft thrift store purchase post, the printed plaid and the marbled print are both made by Benartex, but probably not in the same decade, and maybe not even the same century (will I ever stop making that joke?  doubtful.), so they definitely aren't meant as coordinates.  The floral has no selvedge information, and is old enough to only be 36" wide.  It does not match perfectly, but I am still thrilled by how well it does coordinate. 

 

 I didn't do anything out of the ordinary in the way this dress was constructed

...well...not intentionally...

 

 See, because the pockets are low enough that they hang past the area where the ruffles are sewn to the upper skirt, I decided to partially turn the pockets to the outside, to keep them out of the way.  I sewed the ruffles to the edge, top stitched through all layers to keep the seam allowance pointing in the correct direction, then turned the pockets back to the inside and discovered that I had sewn the ruffles to the wrong edge.

Ah.

My first thought was that I would pick out the pockets, flip them over, and re-sew them, but then I realized that would mean that the print on the skirt would be running in a different direction from the print everywhere else, because I had taken the time when cutting to make sure it was all running in the same direction.

Now, do I think anyone else in the world would have noticed if the print reversed direction at any point on this dress?

 

I do not think they would, no.  But.  I would know.

I also knew that I did not want to deal with getting the gathers all back to the correct width.  I picked out all of the top stitching, then cut the upper skirt fabric very close to the ruffle stitching, without cutting any of the seam allowance.  I then attached that to the correct edge of the upper skirt, with a seam allowance depth of slightly more than 5/8".

This means there's an extra layer of fabric in the ruffle seam allowance now, but the marble print cotton is light and crisp, so it's not adding obvious bulk.  It also means the skirt is a bit over 5/8" shorter than intended, but it's still longer than the inspiration dress.

(yes, we all agree those look like eyes.)

I cut the entire neckline bias binding as one piece, which isn't something I usually do.  It was nice not to have to fiddle with extra bias seams. 

I switched between my regular tex 40 thread (the purple) and the tex 24 white throughout this project, mostly using the tex 24 for gathering and stitches that wouldn't be seen, but also using it for visible stitching on the white-based floral.  It was a little weird top stitching with thread that fine, since I'm so used to the tex 40.  I'm still willing to try new things.

 

 

And once again to a blurry full-dress photo.

 

It's just what I wanted, and I'm happy to have used some more of the most recently-purchased fabric.  (I don't know what I'm going to do with the Very Polyester Blend other purple and green fabric I bought to go with these.  Possibly donate it back to the craft thrift store...)