A Garment A Week

A Garment A Week – Week 4 – 29/01/2016

Week 4 - a garment a week - lilys dress - stitchremedy.com

This week was not fun.
The idea was to create a comfortable but pretty dress for my daughter, Lily. She loves the lighter fabrics and the high-low mullet hems. One of my favourite dresses has an elastic cinched waist and is comfortable and looks nice. I should have taken a pattern from it and graded it down to Lily’s size.

Instead I took her measurements and tried to make a pattern (difficult for me as I’m used to adult figure shapes, not children’s). The resulting dress from the first pattern was terrible lol. The sides sloped down too much as I hadn’t curved the front of the bodice sides, which it needed to keep the elastic line straight on a body. And I had the elastic too high.

Usually at this stage of sewing a garment I would put it in the too hard or screwed up baskets and start again or forget about it. But I kept to my challenge and unpicked all the sides. Re-cut some panels to go back in and stitched it all back together. Even after measuring a million times it then looked too big! So more tucks and darts were made.
Lucky I wanted a messy stripe mix on the front anyway. But this also created issues with sewing fabrics cut off grain.

The bodice is bagged out with the lining and the elastic is in a casing made from the seam at the waist. The skirt has a double roll hem and french seams so you don’t see any over-locking with the hem line difference.
Lily is happy with her dress ♥
If I make her another similar – I will take the pattern from this one and the insides will look a lot prettier!
This does prove challenge is working 🙂 Lots of lessons learnt this week.

week 4 a garment a week