One week in, one finished peice

The finished dress (not the potato sack).

Longer ago than I can care to remember, I started making a dress from the Sewing School pages in peppermint magazine.  It's a lovely idea, but unfortunately I fell down at the first hurdle.  It had a square in the printed pattern that you were meant to ensure was 10cm, so that the whole pattern was the right size.  Well it wasn't, but I had no idea how to change it so I just carried on anyway, schoolgirl error.  This, plus I don't think it always used best practice techniques, meant that at the end of following the instructions I had a prettily-patterned potato sack.  I was loath to throw away the time, effort and nice fabric so I embarked on a rescue mission.










I started by mirroring the pleats that the pattern had a the back of the neck at the back of the waist.

 

But there was still a ridiculous amount of fabric at the front so I had a go a shirring.  This was a bit of a disaster at first, but my hunch was that the fact the elastic I had bought at Barnet Market four years ago felt like rotten knicker elastic wasn't doing me any favours.  One trip to my new sewing mecca, Spotlight Rockdale, and several youtube videos later, it all went swimmingly.  Shirring is my new favourite thing.

I then sewed some bias tape around the neckline, took it off, reduced the neckline as there was still heaps of fabric flapping about and put it back on again.

Action shot

It's still pretty shonky but it'll make a great dress to throw on on a hot day, I've learnt a couple of new techniques and stopped my time, effort and money ending up as landfill.

Plus in writing this post I've seen what the peppermint sewing school have this month (Issue 17 Prom Perfect) and I like it a lot, the question is will I learn from my past mistakes?