Spring for Cotton Dress is done!

I've finally finished it. There have been many moments of hemming and hawing and changing my mind but it's done and it's beautiful. I don't yet have any pictures of it on me and not just my dress form but I will have them soon.

One of the first things I vexed over was how to finish my armscyes. Turn and topstitch? Turn and hand stitch? As I pondered I came to the realization that I wanted to use single fold bias on the edge, press it to the inside, and then hand stitch it. I debated using hem tape and gave topstitching a shot but I wasn't doing either of those things other places so it just didn't flow the way I wanted it to.

This dress grew on me the more I worked on it. I think one of the things that I loved most about it was that I didn't have all the answers. I played with things, looked at it on the dress form, and I let the solutions speak to me. One of the next issues was figuring out what I wanted the neckline to be when I didn't have the vest on. I initially thought these fold backs were the answer, but it just wasn't sitting right and when I had the vest on the fold backs sat beyond the edges of the vest. I ironed out the creases I made when putting the lapels in and then I put it back on the dress form to play with it.  

I really loved what it looked like without any fold backs in it at all. It's modern with retro styling. It was such a happy accident. It looks so cool!

It should not go unmentioned that Hobbes did not let my crafting get in the way of his need to sleep in the middle of the of the floor in my studio. He's got a commitment to excellence.

I used an invisible zipper on the side seam and for the first time in a long time it lined up perfectly on the first go. Goodness gracious what a score!

Look at that beautiful zipper! Heck yah!

Also just on a side note (Get it side note? We're looking at the side seam), I also added pockets to the skirt. All dresses should have pockets. It should be a prerequisite.

One thing that made my life incredibly easy was that because the skirt was just two gathered rectangles the hem was straight. So I just picked the depth of the hem, I chose 4" because I wanted it to be substantial, and then I took to my glorious machine, and blind hemmed it. 

It looked great but then The dress felt very plain and was almost veering into weird cat lady jumper territory. I began playing around with different hem lengths but when I made it shorter it didn't look balanced and I didn't want it to be longer. That was when I noticed the leftover red bias. I started playing with it and I really love it at the hem.

Now let's have a conversation about the vest. It was one of my favorite portions of the dress. In my last post I spoke about the vest issues I was having because I hadn't interfaced it on both sides. I entertained trying to take the first one apart and adding interfacing to it, but it was too much work. I decided to just recut and start over. It came out much better. I am really happy with the end result.

I love my dress! I'm not on the fence anymore. There will be more pictures forthcoming of me in the dress. I have plans with one of my favorite photographers on Wednesday. Till then!