I had a blast with making this, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. After I completed putting it all together for the first time, I realized I needed to make quite a few adjustments to make it fit properly, which stressed me out a bit, but I’m very glad I decided to take time to do that/
Since class, I’ve been working on the skirt and pockets of my dress, which are now almost complete! Now I just have to do some minor clean up with the gathered seam and then finish the seam on the inside, then attach the skirt to the top and add an elastic band underneath the bust. I’ll probably finish today!
I finished both halves of the bodice of my dress! I spent the weekend mostly working on the sleeves after I finished up the bodice last week. The next steps are to start putting together the skirt and cutting out and attaching the pockets. Things are moving along nicely and I think it should all be done pretty soon if things keep on going smoothly.
I chose to follow the Advanced Track
I felt pretty confident with most of these, but I really struggled with understitching #3.
Final sketches (left), earlier sketches (right)
I really just want to make a casual, comfortable dress that I can wear in the summertime 🙂
I still plan on adjusting the bodice dart more ASAP, so that everything lays flat and I don’t have that weird bit of extra room.
Bodice
I changed the bust dart to lower the end point, but then there was too much room underneath the bust. I then tried to change that, which helped to some extent, but now I’m left with this issue: the dot on this image is where the dart ends, but within the circle here you can see that the fabric keeps folding over beyond where the dart ends, though the dart was ironed. I don’t quite know how to fix this.
The current bust dart is marked with teal.
Trousers
I made adjustments to my bodice and trouser blocks over the weekend, and I think I’ve improved the fit. To my bodice: I widened the neck by bringing it out and down. I moved my bust darts down an inch, dropped the arm hole, and moved the shoulder seam forward by changing the angle of the shoulder on the front pattern, which also changed the fact that my back arm hole was too long. On the back bodice, I also widened the neckline a bit. I also changed the back darts by dropping them an inch or so. On both sides of the bodice, and shortened the shoulder length so it dropped off at my natural shoulder. On the trousers, I didn’t change quite as much. I changed the hip point so that it was higher and taken in a bit, shortened the whole pant length, and took in the back side seam to make the leg a bit smaller. I made the back rise longer by adding more length to the inside crotch. I made these adjustments to the patterns first, and then ripped out what seams I needed to, transferred the new markings, and sewed them in. I didn’t need to cut any fully new pieces. I tried on my slopers, and I found that my bust dart stills seemed off, and there was a lot of extra room underneath the bust. I tried to adjust for this, but I think it still could use some work, though I’m not exactly sure what to do.
Back trousers on left, front trousers on right.