Color Blocked Dress

The red and black color blocked dress is complete.  I just finished hemming it this afternoon.  If I should ever make this dress again, I will do several things differently.

My inner voice was telling me to attach the various front and back pieces together much differently.  Yet I decided to follow the pattern instructions.  This created a lot of ripping seams apart, taking up seams, re-sewing the various parts again.

If you sew the front pieces together, then sew back pieces a lot of fitting issues can be taken care of in the side seams without having to disturb other garment pieces.  I did not do that with this dress and it became annoying and frustrating to me.  My choice nonetheless.

The front and back waist inserts created fitting issues, at least for me, and I think because of how they are drafted.  One final fitting thing I did in addition to taking deeper side seam was to sew a tuck in the front waist insert aligning the tucks with the front seams.  This gave a much better fit through that area on me. 

Honestly, I did this also because I did not want to take out the side zipper and do more fittings.  I had already removed the zipper and re-inserted.  When doing that I caused a hole in the seam allowance but very close to the exposed side.  Fusible black interfacing fixed this little hole,  In the end, I am pleased with the final fit.

I did not like the waist insert facings. They were cumbersome to attach because all seams are sewn.  They would have you slipstitch them in place.  I do not like doing so much hand sewing. I ending up attaching them quite differently using my sewing machine as much as possible.

I will try to take some photos of the inside of the dress to give you an idea about the facings.  I am glad that this project is complete; it seemed to go on and on.

Onto the next project, which may or may not be the other Butterick dress I had originally plan to sew.  Updates later, off to see the Red Carpet showing prior to watching the Oscars.