Fall For Cotton Sew A Long Dress Finished!

It has been a long time since I've blogged.  Twelve days in fact.  I will tell you that I have been very busy and I think that you will not be disappointed.

I have been putting a great deal of effort into making sure my dress for the Fall for Cotton sew a long was a smash.  I didn't cut any corners, even though I have been devilishly tempted, I followed through with hand stitched details, and took the advice I give to my students: "If you don't have time to do it right now how are you going to have time to re do it later?"

In my first post about this fantastic sew along I showed off some of my inspiration and the fabrics I was thinking of.  I went back and forth over what I wanted to do and wether I wanted to use a pattern or make my own.  My favorite inspirational image was this one:

The dress I really love is the blue one.  I just think it is so flattering, I love the neckline and midriff details.  That said I am not the hugest fan of bows and in order to put my own stamp on things I knew I was going to change a few things up.

Next I chose my fabric.  I went with a D.S. Quilts fabric from her Daisy Mae series.  The color of the fabric really popped and I do love a great graphic print:

I looked for some patterns lack-lustily, but in my hear of hearts I think I knew that I really wanted to make my own pattern.  I usually like to flat pattern my new inspirations but for some reason with this project I was just so drawn to draping.  So I wheeled Dressmerelda (what my wife named my dress form) to the center of the room and got going.

After draping and marking the pattern on the form I took it off and the n using a pounce/trace wheel I transferred the pattern to brown paper.  Once I corrected the patterned and trued up my lines it was time to go into a muslin.

I should say that I do not love making muslins so I try to make wearable muslins out of fabric I have had in my stash for a while.  This allows me to get rid of some of the things I keep in my dragon hoard and on the off chance it turns out great I have a new outfit.  As luck would have it my muslin fit like a dream! The only thing I wanted to change was to alter the shape of the contrast piece at the neckline.

After making all my corrections I dove into my fashion fabric.  Since it had this amazing print and pattern I decided that I wanted to make covered buttons from it to add an extra touch to the finished look.  All I did was to take some left over fabric covered buttons I had from my wedding dress and lightly glued them to the fabric, being mindful of the pattern, of course. Then I trimmed the fabric down to within 3/8" of the button and ran a gathering stitch.  Then I pulled the strings and secured my end, then they were ready to be sewn on.

The dress came together quite nicely and I actually even enjoyed taking stuff out and re-doing it so that it would be right.  Ok I think that "enjoyed" was an over statement, but I definitely took pride in it.  I didn't even mind and sewing the facings and hem for a clean finish.  I am so proud, and so without further adieu here is the veritable avalanche of photos of me in this dress:

One of the areas I altered was to take away the bow at the neck line and I changed it for covered buttons and loops.

I love pockets.  Sometimes in what I can only call a fit of stupidity I don't put pockets in the things that I make.  This is always a mistake that I look back on and kick myself for.  So I made sure that in the vein of not wanting feel like an idiot later, I made sure to add the pockets.

This was such a blast and I am really grateful to Rochelle from Lucky Lucille for putting this whole thing together.  I was inspired by the sew a long itself, as well as seeing all of the other amazing entries.  Everyone should be so proud!