Monday, May 2, 2016

No guts, no glory

I decided that I should go ahead and sew something up this weekend, even though I didn’t lose my job. I struggle sometimes in finding the time to do creative things like sewing, especially if I’m not 100% positive I’ll get a wearable item out of the time and money I spend on it.

In this case, I was inspired by another sewing blogger who wrote about yet another blogger who suggested that using up fabric already purchased is a Very Good Thing. I’ve got, well not a lot but enough fabric that I could make a fair number of items without having to go to the store. And I’ve got plenty of patterns on hand.

Then Friday night Kent and I were at Nordstrom’s Rack and I found an Eileen Fisher dress that I liked but it didn’t really work on me (I am short waisted so sometimes dresses hit me at the wrong place on my hips). As with so many of Eileen Fisher clothing, the lines were long and elegant with a minimum of embellishment; it was a tank dress but was fluid enough to also feel like a column dress. I’ve had some lovely black with white polka dot silky knit for a few years now and thought I could probably create my own version of the Eileen dress.

But that meant winging it for this dress because I started with this pattern. It's intended for for woven fabrics, not knits. But I thought  hoped I could make it work anyway and I liked the overall lines of the dress.


The pattern calls for a zipper, which I didn’t include. The knit has enough give that it wasn’t necessary. I also didn’t include the ties in the front; instead, I used elastic stitched from the wrong side to create a tiny bit of gather under the bust. I didn’t gather it a lot because I want the dress to flow and was also concerned that it would look a bit like a maternity dress if I did.

Here’s the finished product—the photo doesn’t capture the fluid drape of the dress and in fact I think it looks a bit sad sack. But it doesn’t in real life.


2 comments:

D Russell said...

I can see the drape. Your changes to the pattern were really good ideas. It looks great on you!

Jen Shear said...

Love it! Especially love the length of it :)