Dress finished!

This dress was finished last week. It turned out just great. It's a pity though that the details just don't show in the picture, because with this dress it is all about the details. So again, here's the linedrawing:

And just as I expected: the fabric was very nice to handle. I think it has lycra in it. If you stretch it you can see some white appearing. Only one thing really challenged my patience, the ruffling in the neck and at the bottom of the collar, where it's attached to the skirt.

At the neck you have to sew a piece of elastic. I think I tried four times before it was acceptable enough.

And then the ruffling at the collar.

I thought I could get away with the normal way: stitching two rows in a loose stitch, in the longest stitchlength. Yeah..right! No way this was gonna work. The fabric just 'ate' the stitches and there was no way I could ruffle this fabric. So after trying a few times (taking the wrong stitches out was a complete nightmare!) I decided on a handmade stitchline and that worked just fine. It's a good thing I came up with this idea because I was about to throw my sewingmachine out of the window (without opening it first, hehe...)

I know, I have little patience, close to non-existing. But hey, that's just me and I have to deal with it. And I dealt with it.

I skipped the waistband. There was more ruffling and I thought that would only add bulk to the side at the waist, so I just made a band, 4 cm wide and long enough to wrap around my waist from front to back and again to front.

Here's another picture. It's a close-up but details are still hard to see. Maybe I should learn a lesson from this: the more details a garment has, the less detailed the print of the fabric should be. (A solid colour would probably be the best choice for this dress):

I want to seize the opportunity to applaud my lockmachine. Working it's way through 7 layers of which 2 were thickly ruffled. 

So, a Big Thank You ....... and sorry that I made you try to sew and cut through a needle..... (I don't think it suffered any injuries, it's still working just fine. No thanks to me though. But I suppose this was about to happen at some point.)

Now let's see, do I have anything else to tell you. Oh yesss, I went to the local market this morning and I bought 3 pieces of fabric for just 5 euro's. Now if that's not a bargain!!  And here they are:

This one is great for a summerblouse. The white is actually more of a soft-creamy colour.

This is perfect for a fall-blouse.

This is the fun-fabric of the three. I immediately had a vision of a Dickensian nightshirt like this one. Don't know if there will be enough fabric left to make that nightcap though. Nah, just kidding.

Now it's time to cook some dinner. I'm getting rather hungry and there's also a four-legged furball who needs to be fed.

Talk to you all next time.

Gr.

Lilian