Dress Knipmode 2010-10 / 3a finished

This dress turned out great! I love it! But let's not forget that this was the original plan:

Notice anything different between these 2 pictures? Let me help you. The Sleeves!
Last wednesday evening, or should I say: thursdaymorning, at 00.15h, I had finished and set in one sleeve and had high hopes for it. I was still sewing that late because I was just so excited to see how the sleeves would turn out. I think the pattern is absolutely fab and I knew if I could make this work, the dress would be a knockout. So I put it on, looked in the mirror....and was sadly disappointed.

This is what I saw:



Does this sleeve look like the one in the linedrawing? Nope. My sleeve looks like a mushroom! (Or worse..). So after the first moment of disappointment, I didn't want to give up too quickly and started to think how I could solve this. But I just couldn't. Did I make a mistake with the pattern? That wasn't the case. Should I place some vertical elastic to pull up the sagging fabric? No, that would probably just end up in a mess. I decided to think it over for a day and see what I would come up with. No solutions whatsoever popped up so I made the decision to go for the regular sleeves (version 3b). I found out that I didn't have enough fabric to cut 2 new sleeves so for a moment I feared that this was the sad end of a promising start.

But I was happy to find out that the sleeves-that-were-not-to-be, were big enough to use for cutting out the regular ones. The smile on my face re-appeared and I never looked back.

In this picture you can see how the two sleeve-patterns differ from each other.

The fact that it's a special fabric (the dark stripes are velvety) makes this dress work. If this would be fabric in a solid colour I think the dress (version b) would be kind of boring.
All in all, I like it very much. It was super-quick as most of the sewing is done on the serger.
I didn't use a zipper, no need for that when you use fabric with stretch in it.

Trying to find out what the problem was.
In the meantime, I thínk I have figured out the problem. First of all, I have been concentrating way too much on the linedrawing. I should have looked in the magazine itself to remind me how the dress looked made up. Because this doesn't resemble the linedrawing at all (but is still GORGEOUS. After all, it was this picture that made me fall in love with this dress in the first place):

Seeing this, I knew in an instant what was the problem with my initial sleeves: they were too small!! At the widest of my upperarms, the fabric is pulling a bit horizontal which explains the visible horizontal line.
The extra volume in the top is looking for a way to hang down but stops at that point. Sounds logical right?
Maybe a tip for anyone who wants to sew this dress as well.  Make sure they're not too small. Or check it out with a muslin first.
Now I'm off to a work-related party to show off my new dress ☺
I do feel beautiful and that's what counts.

Have a very lovely weekend everyone!

Gr.
Lilian