Marilyn and Me

Yesterday I wore my new dress-Marilyn Dress by Style Arc Patterns.  With all the fitting adjustments I  made, the end result was worth it.  The dress passed the wearability factor.  I took a few pictures of the dress before work yesterday morning.

My camera battery was not at full charge when I took this picture.  I like this picture over others I took of the front view, the brightness and colors are off no matter the editing I did. Pictures below are much better and very much like the actual fabric in real time.

Here is the back view:

The fit is good and will be better as I need to take a deeper seam at the back waist area for my swayback.  I doubt if others noticed it much; I could see it when standing side ways and just a tiny seam adjustment will do it.

The fabric wore very well; hardly any wrinkles at the end of the day.  Yeah! As I mentioned previously this fabric was purchased years ago when a local Walmart still had a sewing/fabric section. That WM was closed and they built a super store down the road from that one and eliminated the fabric section when they did so.  I am not sure of the fabric content, but it looks similar to a linen but obviously not as the lack of linen-wrinkles during and end of day proved to me that it wasn't.

I made numerous changes to this pattern. A comment on a previous post stated that SA patterns for her have a lot of ease in the shoulder upper body area and not enough in the bottom.  I found the same.  I sewed 5/8 inch seams for the shoulder and side seams using a 12-14 size for this pattern. I could have gone with 10-12 and used the 3/8 seam allowance.  I ended up taking about 3/4 inch seams in center back in the upper back above waist and tapered to 5/8 from waist down.

After figuring out how to sew the sleeves and attaching, I basted one sleeve in and decided to take a 5/8 seam from shoulder area down to notch in the front and only use 3/8 seam in the back arm area. I made notes all over the pattern instruction sheet so next time I will follow those details.  

I received lots of comments from co-workers and I loved the feel of the dress walking, sitting and standing.  I think the best fabric for this dress is a light weight fabric that has some drape to it.  I have some crepe fabric that I am thinking about trying next.

I am not sure what I will make next but most likely it will be a top pattern, though I am also thinking about some shorts.  More later.