Friday, 1 April 2011

Live and Learn (More about Jersey Dress)

Dear Maricou, Audrey and Rosy! After reading the lovely compliments on my jersey dress I feel a need to write one more post about this dress to answer your comments.
The fit of the dress is really good. During all my life I hesitated wearing jersey dresses because I believed that I need to have a flawless figure to wear jersey. So this is not only the first jersey dress I have sewed myself but also the first jersey dress I own.
I find this pattern very successful. It would flatter almost any type of figure hiding flaws and transforming it into hourglass type due to a very delicate slimming at the waistline and widening into soft flowing folds at the hem line. For those who don't have Boutique or ШиК magazines there is a very similar pattern in Burda 12/2005-102A. I considered it as an option as well.



I absolutely agree with Maricou that Boutique explanations are very brief. I think the magazine targets experienced seamstresses that's why explanations are very short and poor.

Very quickly after finishing the dress I learned about my mistakes. When binding a neckline I made two mistakes. First, I didn't use the sewing tape to prevent the neckline from stretching. Second, I used elastic zigzag stitch to attach the edging (I have no serger, use my regular sewing machine). All sewing books say "use elastic stitch for jersey", aren't they?
That's why after wearing the dress a couple of times I noticed that the neckline started to stretch. I was able to quickly fix this problem by unpicking the edge, ironing the neckline to the initial size, ironing-on fusible bias tape and stitching up the edging using straight stitch. Live and learn, as they say ...

That's how it looks like now
 Rosy, I admire your red hat. I am ashsamed to admit that I don't even own a single hat... :)). But probably anticipating your request I recently downloaded the vintage hats patterns that Maricou published in her blog L'Echo de la Mode de 1956. So now they are on my sewing wish list.

Have a nice day...

3 comments:

  1. It's amazing the connection you get to establish via internet by people who would never have known otherwise, I am very happy to find you and you are very kind to answer this way to questions that arise. You are great! And now I'm going to see these patterns of hats (which are my weakness). Thanks dear friend!

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  2. Thank you, Rosy, for your kind words!

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  3. I am 100% with Rosy the sewing blogosphere is such a wonderful small world.
    I am glad to share my old magazines and so happy that you can use them.
    Happy sewing

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