Lovely Corners!

I have bitten the bullet and cut my fabric!  The cotton lawn lining was really lovely to cut but is a complete wrinkle-fest however much I iron, press and steam it.  At least it is the lining so I am the only one who will see it.  The moss crepe was pretty awful to cut, it has a bit of give to it and it likes to shift around all over the place.

Stay Tape on Seams

The Burda Style pattern calls for bias or stay tape on the neckline and armhole edges.  I must confess I didn't have a clue what this was!  After a bit of googling I found a great article on it over on Gertie's blog which explained it all clearly.  basically it is used for stabilising the curves on neck and armholes and is sewn on just inside the seam allowance.  I realise now that this is just a different technique to stay stitching which I have used on necklines before.  I thought I would give this a go though so see how it works in comparison   I would imagine it is a fair bit stronger than normal stay stitching.  I got some sew in stay tape on ebay as I couldn't find iron on and I wasn't really sure I would get iron on tape to behave.

Lining Front Sections

I had another go at the dreaded angled front pieces using this tutorial on the Burda Style website.  It is a really simple tutorial but it totally works!  My corners are crisp and lovely and although there is a little wrinkling in the lining fabric corners, the moss crepe corners are looking good!

Front of bodice

The moss crepe is harder to sew as it is a little slippery but it doesn't need pressing at all and doesn't crease or wrinkle at all!

Back bodice

I have sewn the back darts and the shoulder and side seam now so the bodice itself is all in one piece.  It is looking pretty good but I still don't  know what to do about the cap sleeves.  Sleeves or sleeveless?

Mocking it up!

Yikes!  It has been far too long since a blog post!  I am afraid I have had a bit of a sewing block recently, due to illness, too much work and just being tired all the time.  I am back now though as I have less hours over the next few weeks which may be bad for the bank balance but it has brought my Sewjo back!  Plus I am doing other things like house hunting and wedding planning eek!

So back to the red dress!  I have finally completed the muslin/toile for the bodice of this dress.  This took longer than expected purely because of my own stupidity.  Yes I have sewn with Burda Style patterns before.  Yes I know you have to add the seam allowance, everyone knows that right?  Yes I managed to trace and cut the pattern and forget to add it!  And I cut out the whole toile and also forgot to add it!  I sewed the first seam and the realisation came crashing down on me, this was never going to fit without that seam allowance.

DON'T FORGET THE SEAM ALLOWANCES!

After ignoring it for a few days *ahem* weeks I finally summoned up the energy and re-cut it and here I am wearing it!  I have used a cheapo cotton sheeting I had from a previous project but you get the idea.

Trying out the camera remote

Sewing the toile was really helpful as I discovered that I just didn't know how to sew those angled bodice sections correctly.  No matter how I clipped or manipulated the fabric I just couldn't get sharp corners and I have ended up with rounded edges.  I have now found a really helpful tutorial on the Burda Style website which I think will help me out.  I will give it another test run before using my actual fabric.

The bottom of the toile is sitting right on my waist line which is where I want the skirt to come so I will extend the pattern pieces on the bottom by another 1.5cm so that the waist is actually on my waist and not sitting above that.  I don't normally have to make this adjustment as I tend to have a short torso in Simplicity patterns so this is interesting.

There will be a bit more room in the arm once made up properly.  You can almost see those awful bust sections here.

This is horribly wrinkled and actually fits much better than the picture shows.  The darts in the back are pretty perfect though there does seem to be a bit of extra fabric high up on the neck, I often seem to get this with patterns but I am not really sure how to remedy it.  It is not as bad here as it has been in other patterns so I am not too worried.

The angled sections in the front may need moving slightly to accommodate my bust a little better but I am not really sure how to go about doing this.  Also I haven't mocked up the sleeves here, there are little cap sleeves included in the pattern but I am not sure if I wanted to use them or not as I quite like the look of the bodice as it is.  I think I will make up my mind once I have the actual fabric bodice cut out.

If anyone has any comments or feedback on improving my toile please let me know!  I would really value some feedback as I am basically self taught and half the time even if I know what needs changing I don't know how to go about it!