Identity Crisis Dress

I frequently find myself attracted to dresses that are basically sacks. I think it's because they always seem classic. Casually elegant. Unfussy. 

Not to mention easy to sew and make fit.

This shirt dress seemed like the kind of simple dress I could throw on to to get brunch with the girls or wear to a relaxed summer barbecue.

Unfortunately I don't do either of those things. That should have been the first clue that this dress was not a good fit for my lifestyle.

I picked up McCall's 7120 a while back at one of those $2 a pattern sales that I am a sucker for. I also had 3ish yards of Nicole Miller "abstract print" twill hanging around.

Project Cost:

Pattern: $2

Fabric: $36 - estimate. Fabric is $20/yard online and I wouldn't have bought it unless I got it for 40-50% off.

Total: $38

The initial result:

I sincerely wish I had taken a picture of the dress once I assembled it sans sleeves. Here's a rough idea of what it looked like, except one must remember that although I am not a model it was proportionately large on me but I didn't look half as fetching:

 

Suffice it to say it was large, unstructured, and more hobo chic than boho chic.

You know what that means. It was time to....

Please go to iTunes and download the theme song to MacGyver as you read this next part.

I was not content to let this abomination stand. It was time to give this sad sack of a dress a new identity. A strong, independent, female identity. 

To Do: Add Curves

My body has curves and gosh darnnit so should my dress.

Time for some major surgery. I found my natural waist and cut the dress in half.

That's right. Because I'm a maverick.

I did this so I could adjust the bodice and skirt separately. As I've mentioned before, my upper half is a full size or two smaller than my bottom, so I knew I'd be conducting major surgery on the top, and some minor surgery on the bottom, and somehow I'd have to make the two meet.

Once I had the top and bottom separated, I found the middle of the front and the back of the bodice and pinched until it started feeling more fitted. Fixing the back was easy because I just created a seam and sewed it up. I then adjusted the back facing the same way.

The front was trickier because of the v-neck. Now that I'm thinking about it, I made it more complicated than I had to but it actually turned into a design feature of the dress.

For the front I pinched the fabric FORWARD, sewed it, then flattened the pinched part and sewed along each edge, like so:

This necessitated some fixes to make the v-neck work and the facing strip, blah blah, I made it work and that's all you need to know.

Then I threw in a bunch of darts in the front and back of the skirt to take out the extra width from the waist, tapering to the hips where I definitely needed the extra width.

I had to take in the darts even more until I got the fit just right, and I actually took the sides in a bit more too.

I got everything fitting nicely in the torso and skirt, then I had to get them to fit together. There was still a bit too much ease in the waist area of the bodice, so I took the sides in a bit more. I still need to go back and taper that in a straight line up to the bust dart.

That left me with this:

I still have to hem the bottom and add the sleeves, although I'm on the fence about the sleeves. 

Mistakes:

1. Should have realized the pattern on the fabric should have been centered along the fold lines of the front and back. It's slightly off center and I wish I had paid attention.

2. Should have realized this pattern would be terrible for me.

Current Conclusion:

I'm not done with this dress yet, but I think I did an OK job of salvaging it from the "never going to finish" pile, even if it had to undergo an identity crisis to get there.

Sewing the pattern as created would have taken me like 1.5 hours once I was done with cutting. Instead, I spent like 3 hours with all these adjustments (and still don't have a finished garment).

At the end of the day, I'm not sure I would ever purchase this dress in a store. I think that's the biggest problem with most of my sewing projects -- I spend the time and money creating something that I would have returned to the fitting room attendant.

I suppose I have to admit I enjoy the problem solving aspect, even if I am not ending up with my dream wardrobe. At least I can see myself wearing this to the places I wear dresses -- like the wedding I'm invited to once every other year or a work trip or something. 

Yeah, that's definitely more my style.