Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The 2011 Birthday Dress - Part 2

Of course, I went out last night.

In my defense, it was a lovely day. It was 20 degrees and windy. The air was crisp, and I decided I *must* leave my cave of an apartment and go for a walk. Walking in Toronto is always interesting, there's stores that provide good sewing inspiration, and good cooking inspiration too. (Which I need pretty desperately, I haven't entered my kitchen for a month and a half.)

There's no good reason this walk turned into a 'call a friend and meet for a couple of pints' night - but it did, of course - I had a groupon to use that was going to expire soon, and I hate to let them go unused.

So, I got back home at 11.00pm.

I'm so, so glad I got the fabric all cut out. I like sewing, I hate cutting. I didn't have many seams to sew to get the dress to a try-on stage, so I got to work and got going. At this point, the only things left to do on the dress are (1) to hand-tack the neck facings to the shoulder seam, (2) to finish the armhole seams and (3) to decide what length I want the dress, and hem it.

That's just a couple of hours of work, yay.

Good news - I *love* this dress. It is (exactly as Carolyn said) sexy in an incredibly understated way. I was afraid I'd have to wear Spanx under it, but no - it skims rather than clings (an advantage when you actually make your own pattern size, instead of the optimistic lower size.)

I'll see if I can get photos up soon! On Saturday, I'm going to be too busy partying to actually worry about things like photos for the blog.

Incidentally, this is an incredibly easy pattern to sew, I have no idea what the 2.5 dot rating is all about, unless it is to do with the arm flaps (which I'm leaving out) or with the incredible amount of cutting. I agree with the cutting, but once you are past that bit, really simple!

(Or could it be that in the last 4-5 years of sewing, I've secretly been advancing my skills, and am now ready to try a 2.5 dot pattern? I don't really think that's the case though - must experiment.)

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