Yes, it has actually happened - I have sewn up something. A dress. I used a piece of fabric from my stash - a blend of cotton and elastan and made it into a fifties-like dress. At least I think it looks like a 50's style.
Since the fabric has got quite a busy print, I wanted to use a sewing pattern with simpler lines, so that the print and the style don't clash. I used Burda 7488.
The dress pattern was pretty simple to sew up. Fortunately, because the English version of instructions was missing from the pattern envelope (I don't know if it was never there or if I lost it, but I somehow think the first is the truth, arghhh), so I had to follow the instructions in German. Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem, because I speak German, but I am not completely familiar with the sewing vocabulary, so I was lucky that the dress was pretty straight-forward to sew up. I even made my (I think) first attempt ever to match the fabric print on the upper front bodice sewing lines :-).
Here's the result:
This is the first fully lined dress I made - at least lined this way, with a concealed zipper.
The changes I made to the pattern were minor - I added interfacing to the neckline, left out the band on the skirt hem and omitted to make the belt. I think that the busy fabric print needs to be disrupted a bit to show the dress silhouette, so I used a brown leather belt on the dress form. And I intend to wear it with a one colored belt in real life too.
The concealed zipper:
(The dress needs to be washed yet - the fabric markings are still visible here)
I added interfacing to the neckline:
The concealed zipper in the lined dress wasn't such a problem to sew as I always dreaded. The result is not perfect, but I think it is good enough for my first concealed zipper in a lined dress. The problem I eventually had was the very fine lining fabric. In fact, I managed to insert the invisile zipper on a second attempt (yay!), but as I tried to close and open the zipper a couple of times, it made a hole into the lining. This really disappointed me, because I thought that the zipper was sewn in pretty well and was not it the way of the slider. I had to resew a part of it to salvage the lining.
The one thing I hated doing was sewing the shoulder seams. This is really quite a trivial part od a dress to sew, but because these seams played a part in the lining insertion, that I didn't understand fully until consulting one of my sewing books, I eventually had to sew them completely by hand. I partly blame the Burda instructions, which are never really explanatory in great details, but to be honest, I should have thought about the dress construction more profoundly before actually sewing some parts of it. The next time I'll be wiser. (Fingers crossed :-P).
Aside from that, I think I like the dress. It still needs to stand a test of being worn, but my dress form looks quite happy in it :-)...
I hope to get to sewing again soon, hopefully the next weekend.
In the meanwhile...
... happy sewing to you :-)!
