Saturday, September 01, 2007

My Favorite is not so favorite at the moment

DH and I went riding on the motorcycle today on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Weather has changed some and not so awfully hot, but warm enough for me. Upon returning home, I went to work on my dress.

From my last time in the sewing room I had to make some fitting adjustments. After making those I attached the cap sleeves and then used black fold over elastic instead of turning up the hem and topstitching.

I decided to do this on the neckline. What a disaster that turned out to be. The neckline does not lay flat and looks ripply with this elastic. I cannot get the front waist tie to work right either. The back is still too full also. My mantra during all of this is "make it work", "make it work". So I decided to trim out about 3/8 inch from the back midriff at the side seams. I decided to eliminate the front belt tie and will make a belt/sash to use instead. My idea is to make it long enough to wrap around my waist and tie in the front, helping give some definition for the midriff. The knit fabric is so light and thin that the ties insert as directed just droop when inserted.

I also cut off the fold over elastic at the neck. I found some black knit fabric in my stash that I plan to use as the neckband. My hope that this is heavier than the current knit and will lay flatter to upper chest/neck area than the current fabric would, given the amount of stretch I am seeing. Plus it will, I think, work with the black elastic on the sleeve hems.

I was getting so frustrated with this that I decided it was best to leave it for now and do something else. I thought I will post what is going on here and if anyone reading has any suggestions, please leave a comment. All help, suggestions, support is greatly and always appreciated.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Linda, Bummer that the dress is misbehaving! Especially after you had such success with your last Simplcity 3775. I made this pattern out of a slinky ITY fabric and I had to really adjust it to work with the fabric. It seems it needed much less ease.
    When I used the foldover elstic on the neckline, I stretched it a bit and it seemed to work fine. But each knit is differnt.
    Good idea to take a break and come back to it after a motorcycle ride!
    Good luck!

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  2. I'm sorry that your dress is not turning the way you want it to be. Robin is right: different fabrics behave differently and I also think that making a break is the right thing to do. Have you tried loosening the presser foot pressure? It's just an idea, because I'm not very experienced with this technique.

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  3. I'm sorry that your dress is giving you so many frustrations. I'm glad you decided to take a break and come back to it, I'll sure it will 'behave' then!

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