This One's for Carolyn

Hey Carolyn — I finally made a wearable version of Vogue 1250!

If you remember, I first muslined this pattern in a black knit and altered the heck out of the pattern. Today, because I weigh less now, I removed all the alterations except for the FBA and downsized from a 20+ on the bottom to a straight 18-. I would've gone to the 16, but the upper bodice was already FBA'd and I didn't want to mess with it.

I was also inspired by Art Attack's sleeved version and added sleeves to mine, but a little differently. I just drew on dolman sleeves and didn't use a dropped shoulder seam like she did. I'd rather have no armsyce seam than a dropped shoulder seam, but that's me.

So here's the dress in a brown/beige ITY knit print, on its own. No pantyhose were harmed in the making of these Sunday night photos. ;-)

Belted, because the dress needs *something.* I don't like sheaths on me with no accent pieces. I don't have the body for them. (Yet!)

With the Sewing Workshop eShrug I downloaded, lengthened, altered, and made this afternoon.

With the eShrug tied below the waist.

The eShrug is a weird little downloadable pattern. It works but only after I made some alterations, like scooping out a back neck curve instead of going with the completely horizontal edge. I also reshaped the "lapels" so I didn't look like I was ready for take-off. And I had to add sideseams because the original doesn't have any but the full width of the pattern didn't fit on my fabric (even though the pattern gives yardarge for 44" fabric and mine was closer to 60" wide). That's OK though because it made it so I could sew in the sleeves flat, sleeves which I lengthened to full length. None of these changes took a lot of time, and lengthening instructions were included in the pattern, so I'm not really complaining. It was interesting to see how it was drafted and it was definitely instant gratification.

My sleeve addition. Can you guess why I chose this particular sleeve length? If you look closely, you can see that I removed all extra width below the waist that I had added back in July, except for the width added by the FBA. I also lengthened the cowl facing about 1-1/2" to give it a little more weight.

And the back piece. The width addition is technically still in the pattern, but I removed some at the side seam before cutting my fabric and sewed out the rest when stitching up the side waist darts. There's still a little too much width/length at my back waist so if I make this again anytime soon, I'll try to remember to address that.

Here's the sleeve inside out. There's an overarm seam and an underarm seam. I added a band instead of turning a hem for a little more length. I couldn't cut the sleeves longer because of the shape of the pattern.

I think I like the eShrug with this dress the best, either way I've shown above.