Mixed results

The title is a little misleading; the results aren’t mixed because the dress is done and turned out OK. It's my opinion about the dress that's mixed.

I tried making this McCall’s pattern last fall out of a very stretchy sweater knit. That poor dress ended up as a great big lesson on the wrong kind of material to use for someone new to working with knits. I still have the pieces but I’m not sure anything can be resurrected from that attempt.

I also wasn’t sure I actually liked the pattern, but I was willing to give it another try. You might remember I made this skirt from a tutorial I found online. While the skirt turned out fine, I recognized that (a) it’s not really my style and (b) I have no idea where I’d wear it. So I picked out the stitching holding the elastic together, and that skirt became the bottom of the new dress. I had enough material left to cut out the top this weekend.

Here’s the finished product—yes it’s on a hanger, but my photographer isn’t home so pictures of me wearing the dress will have to wait.

I still love the material, and the color too. But I’m not sure this is the most flattering dress for me. Unless Kent barfs on it, though, I’ll probably still take it to Jamaica. While we don’t have to dress formally for dinner at the resort, they do have a dress code and I don’t have lots of suitable dresses. This one should work.

A moment of silence

Let’s all bow our heads as we ever so briefly mourn the passing of the blue knit dress that never quite was.

You may recall I wanted to make this dress out of the navy knit material you can see in the middle of this picture. However I ordered the material online which meant I couldn’t touch it and decide if the knit were too stretchy. Alas when the fabric arrived, I realized that this knit most definitely is too stretchy.

So I decided to make this pattern instead, figuring it might be kinder to very stretchy materials. I wanted to make the cowl neck view and looked it up on Pattern Review to see what others thought about the pattern. It's only been reviewed once but the reviewer said the cowl neck bodice was absolutely enormous. With that in mind, I cut a smaller size but even so I think Kent could have worn the top of the dress and he wears a 46L in his suit. So I cut out the square neck bodice from the ill fitting cowl neck bodice pieces. While the top fit a lot better, the knit was just making things very complicated. Let me tell you, picking out stitches that have been done on a serger is just no fun at all.

What was supposed to be a one hour dress took me all Sunday afternoon and all of this morning until now at about 11:15 AM Eastern Standard Time when I officially declared the dress dead on arrival. I learned a lot but I won't be finishing the dress, at least not out of this material.

Now I am going to go have a salad for lunch followed by some jalapeno kettle chips. They are my new favorite food indulgence, and the perfect thing to soothe my sense of failure.