Quick Knit Dress

Here's my last last-minute stash bust for the year - a fairly simple knit dress, with wrap top and half circle skirt. It is made from a knit fabric that a friend and fellow seamstress gave to me last year (I think that's when it was anyway) It used up 1.5m of stash.

When I say fairly simple, I can't really think of much to say about it. It should have been straightforward, but the fabric is a little on the flimsy side, and I can tell before having even washed the finished garment that the recovery isn't that great. I've sewn with fabric like this before, where you stretch a strip of fabric for a self binding, and instead of pulling a neckline in, it stretches the neckline out and the binding strip goes all wavy. That's what this fabric did.

I sewed clear elastic into the waist seam as a substitute for a waist stay. When the dress isn't on, the seam looks a little stretched out of shape, moreso after I sewed the elastic in. Fortunately, as the dress does have negative ease, it doesn't look out of shape when I'm wearing it.

When I tried the dress on before hemming, the neckline was sitting nicely, in the right place, no gaping, and the waist seam was behaving itself, sitting at the waist. I put the dress on my dummy for a few days before I got around to hemming it, and all of a sudden the bodice had stretched, the neckline was gaping, and the dress developed a bit of a drop waist. My husband doesn't think it's dropped, and that it looks fine where it is, but when it isn't how you designed it, it just feels wrong, you know?

The dress was so long, that when I started pinning it up to hem, I briefly contemplated doing a hi-low hem, and keeping all the length in the back of the dress. I even put it out there on the Stashbusting Facebook group to see what others thought. I did have my heart set on a shorter dress though, so cut a stack off and made an even hem line (at least I hope it is. I pinned it up while it was on the dummy, rather than wait for assistance from an unwilling adult to pin it up while I was wearing it).

Hi-Low hem?

I decided that it was worth getting the coverstitch machine out to do this hem (unlike my last top where I just couldn't be bothered), and I'm glad I did. It sewed a nice even hem for me this time, and only skipped one small patch of stitching, which I fixed up from the inside. Other than that, I had to put in a little hand stitch a the centre front to stop the neckline gaping.

Playing on the beach with my photo bomber

She vetoed the photo where she was between me and the camera

The half circle skirt has just enough spinning ability for a full grown woman.

So much so that I think I might make another dress just like this, with just a few tweaks.

How did I go with my stashbusting for the year though? I'm glad you asked, but I'll keep you in suspense for just a bit longer, and let you know in my next post, which will be a round up for the year.