purple flowers

I'm finally almost finished with taxes... which means, of course, that the kitchen is *sparkling*, the sewing room is somewhat more organized, and I sewed up something for myself. ;) Here's a little hint.



I stumbled over this fabric on Gorgeous Fabrics and fell in love with the really pretty flowers. It's cotton with a hint of stretch, and the surface has a slightly ribbed faille texture to it. SO pretty.

Here's another hint...



Yup... another Passport dress, since I had the pattern already out.





There may be a lot of dresses shown on my blog, but it's not really my normal clothes- I work in jeans and sneakers, and skirts with boots is really stretching the dresscode for my job. So I always feel a little like a kid playing dress up when I wear something fancy like this - right now it's slotted in for Easter brunch, when hopefully it will be warm enough to wear it without tights.

This one feels a little loose around the shoulders, which is weird because I didn't cut it any differently than the other one. I'm chalking it up to the bit of stretch in the fabric -it's not huge, just a bit loose around the neckline this time around. Other than than that, it's pretty much the same as the other dress. So for now it's getting tucked into the closet to wait for warmer weather!

Passport bliss

My passport dress is all finished! I L*O*V*E it, and I can't wait for warm weather to wear it, although I may try it out with some tights and a sweater soonish. This is Simplicity 2209, also known as the Sew Lisette Passport Dress.

Yesterday's post showed my bodice alterations, but it was too dark in the evening to get a picture of my muslin.

Not that it's any brighter today, but here is the muslin I'd made. One side has a dart pinned out for a SBA, the right side is unaltered. Unfortunately, the picture is not super in focus, so you may not see any difference.


When I made the actual dress, I ended up varying from the pattern and making several changes. I was a little wary of all the changes at first, because the instructions for this dress were excellent, and who am I to know how to properly sew a dress. My back alteration, though, made for a curved back seam so I could no longer cut the back bodice on the fold as in the original. At that point I figured I'd just do things my own way.

That led to making my own all-in-one neck and armhole facing, which let me use my favorite through-the-shoulder-seams sewing method. I learned that trick from Marji's old pattern review post on sewing a sleeveless dress lining.



Here's a view of the inside of the bodice front of the front angled darts and how they attach to the skirt:



I used an invisible zipper in the back. Here are my three necessities for invisible zipper insertion.... fusible interfacing in the seam allowance, a 3/8th inch seam allowance, and hand tacking the zipper in place.



I stitched the back facing down against the zipper to neaten the inside:



The hem is double folded and hand sewn down so that I could ease in the fullness.




So here is a headless shot of me in it. I unfortunately didn't quite manage the flower placement perfectly on the bodice. Ooops. And you can't really see the bodice darts with the busy print.




Another change I made was to put in a pocket in the right side seam. I envisioned wearing this dress to work, and I always want a pocket to hold chapstick or a few dollars for lunch or whatever. Excuse the silly face here... I always feel funny smiling for the camera when there's no one behind it. ;)



Here's the back, in need of a hook and eye above the zipper:



It came together really nicely and was a dream to sew up. There will definitely be more versions of this dress this summer, since it's nicely fitting without being too tight or too baggy. Especially with the pocket addition. ;)