Frock-vember

Catchy, isn’t it? Frockvember is for those of us who didn’t quite get around to Frocktober. I’d say it’s going to be a hit.

Many of the ladies from the Wellington Sewing Bloggers Network have streaked ahead, turning out dresses galore for Frocktober. My belated contribution is this cornflower blue silk dupion number. This silk had been sitting in my stash for enough years to earn a big faded stripe down the middle, where the sun hit it. There was 2.8m, and with some creative cutting the stripe is nowhere to be seen.

I used the Dandelion pattern from Disparate Disciplines, which I first saw made by The Amazing Taracat. Like her, I’m hooked (my next post is a Dandelion top).  And I did an overlocking course on the weekend, so I predict knit Dandelions ahead too.  This dress has an awesome side panel so that it almost has princess seams at the front but fits snugly at the back. Here are two shots of the side panels… from the front….

and from the rear….

I made the sweetheart neck and extended it to have three-quarter sleeves (and added a little petal cuff made with this tutorial).

The fit is fantastic. There is plenty of room in the tummy area and I actually ended up taking it in by about 1cm along each front seam (tapering from the bust point, 1cm intake from 10cm below the bust all the way to the hem). Other mods (on a size 12 pattern) were:

• +12cm onto the length (using rayon seam binding tape as hemming tape)
• +19cm onto the length of each sleeve, with 18cm width at the bottom for the front sleeve and 20cm for the back sleeve (tulip cuff width 46cm). This turned out to be a wee bit generous.

I bound all the seam allowances with Hug Snug binding, and for the first time ever used a stay tape on the zipper (a little strip of silk organza, lovely). I’m a convert to this and won’t be making a zip without one again. It just makes the zip seem more solid.

Ta da!