Doing the Charleston (dress)

Wedding season is just around the corner and for the me made crowd, that means the sewing machines are working hard, my Bernina is no exception.

My beautiful cousins wedding is June 3rd and I needed something special.  Although I wear my me made clothes are good enough for everyday, I’ve never made anything particularly special or formal.

I found the fabric first. I didn’t even know what kind it was until and Instagram friend told me it was called scuba knit.  When I googled it, I found this helpful post  .

So I knew I had a really fun fabric, but I couldn’t find any patterns that I thought would do it justice and I started the hunt.   Finally I landed on the Sew MaireFleur blog and was thrilled with what I found.   She had made a beautiful scuba knit Charleston Dress from HeyJune Patterns.   I immediately made the purchase and started assembling the pattern.  One thing that got me really excited about this pattern was the finished garment measurements.  I have never found finished measurements so close to my own. I am a 38″ bust, 33″ waist, and a 42″ hip.  The finished sizes are 38.5″ bust, 33″ waist, and 43″ hip.  That was too close to not try without making pattern adjustments, AND I was very brave in trying the fitted skirt version.

The scuba cut like a dream and the layout was really easy to work with.  The interesting thing was that the convex curves in the bodice.  I admit that mine didn’t line up.  I did my best, but they wouldn’t totally line up.  Yet, the pattern was extremely forgiving.  The instructions said to simply clip the extra and move on.  So I did, and the bodice turned out just fine.

In the past, I have played it fairly safe with my pattern choices.  I get scared off by interesting details that I thought might be too hard.  But the point of this silly blog is to try to push myself into trying new things.  So I opted to try out the frilly sleeves that would add the most amount of character.  Again, I was so happy with how simply the instructions guided me though.

I did goof up a little when I was sewing the skirt.  I put one of the panels on the wrong side and had to reach for the seam ripper. Nellie could tell I was disappointed and hopped up to comfort me though my trial.

The dress was almost done, but it needed something.  I made the dress out of a patterned fabric, and I did not take the time to match the flowers.   For the most part, it doesn’t look  too bad.  However, around the waist, it just needed a little something.

Now remember that swap meet I went to the other week?  I got a box of sewing notions for 5$.  This included a dark green blanket binding, which matched the flowered stems surprisingly well.

Here is the final result folks.  I’ll add a photo of it on me at the wedding,  today is not a good hair day…

notice the invisible zipper, nice right?