However, I've had to completely trash my first attempt. I am now starting again. Here's hoping it works ... this time. The bodice pattern I followed was Vogue 8701, style B, the dress. I loved the top and with the fabric I have and the waist and skirt of the picnic dress, I thought it'd go very nicely.
I need to learn how to read instructions properly, because this is what I ended up with:
While it doesn't really look it in the photo, it is way to short to go over the girls. Granted, this is after I cut it short ... The pattern has two large darts along the bottom, and the pattern calls to cut out a large triangle to make the darts less bulky when you sew them in. So I cut out the triangles, and then couldn't get the dart to work for the life of me. I tried at least four times. So I said screw it, it's going to be shortened anyways to make space for the waist band, and cut it off right above the top corner of the dart cutout. At this length, it was way to short. Not to mention that the gathers I put in to make up for the lack of darts, didn't stick for some reason. They flattened out a bit when I sewed them in, even as I tried to guide/push them through.
Regardless of fit, there is also this problem. The above image is the bodice folded in half, showing the edge I cut. It is so far from straight it's laughable.
There is also this lovely piece of sewing error. It's the armpit. I didn't notice that the fabric had not quite made the seam and instead was sticking out and would fray horribly over time. Before I decided to just ditch this, I tried to run some thread over the frayed edges in the hopes of stopping any future fraying and camouflaging it with the green thread. Yeah. Didn't work. I know.
But, I didn't want to take out the arms and redo them cause they had already caused me strife. They were just a tad to small, so I added in a patch. But because the sleeves are lined, I had to make a full circle of fabric, and because I didn't want the seams on the outside, I had to hand sew in a part of it. This picture is from before I realized how to make the hand sewn stitches invisible. And it happens to be on the part of the arm you can see...
Last but not least, there is this. Where the arm and the back piece attach. That one little jut of fabric. It's already got many layers in it, so folding it down is difficult, let alone sewing it down. I didn't want to see the stitches on the outside, so I tried sewing it to the lining only. I underestimated how hard that would be!
So those are the numerous errors on the bodice that made me decide to throw it out and start anew. Looking at the pattern, it calls for wool or knit. I was using cotton. Probably not the greatest idea. I should have looked at that first. It probably caused un-needed heartache, along with my own personal brand of sewing genius. So, this time I'm going to copy a bodice that uses cotton instead and hope to hell it goes more smoothly. I only have so much fabric to play with. These are the three I'm debating between:
They're all beautiful, and with the bright green fabric, they'd all be summery. For the Simplicity pattern, I'd follow C, the sweetheart neckline with the short sleeves. For McCall's, I'd probably follow D, E, or F as they're basically the same. I'll probably decide sometime soon so I can get the dress finished!
Here's hoping this time around works a whole lot better than the first.
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