Two-Piece Dress Finished

It's nice to start the weekend with a new outfit to wear when the weekend is over and it's back to work. There was no sewing last night. My sister called and that wiped out my sewing time, since we gabbed for about 2 hours. So I got up this morning and finished the Simplicity 1849 top and then spent 2 minutes sewing the matching Magic Pencil skirt. OK, a little longer than 2 minutes, but not much. ;-)

Here's the finished top, now fully hemmed.

And with the skirt, to make a 2-piece "dress." I have the feeling that these 2 pieces will get a lot of mileage, worn both together and separately. They are so *my* colors. And I do love me a print or two. Totally unplanned, but I like the way the print does NOT match across the bust but does further down where the 2 pieces meet up. Adds to the dress illusion while also breaking up the horizontal striping a little bit. The only thing better would be if the dark area hit the waist but one can't have everything in a quickie project and 2 yds of fabric.

Here's a closer view of the twist/knot area. You can see that there is a fair amount of pull/gathering going on here so why the smaller overlay was drafted to end up with virtually no stretch is beyond me. I'm glad I caught that and changed it.

Nancy K asked about the clear elastic applied to the neckline. I'll do a full photo tutorial on that soon-ish, but for now ... go back about 3 or so posts and you'll see more detail from the post on my brown dotty drape neck top. And yes, after stitching on the elastic I turn and coverstitch, as you can see below. For those without a CS machine, you can twin needle it instead. You want some stretch but also recovery, which is why I wouldn't recommend just a straight stitch to finish. On this top, I applied the clear elastic in 3 separate passes - once for each side of the vee (leaving a little tail hanging center front) and then the back neckline separately. I then attached at the shoulder seams and coverstitched in one pass, starting at the point of the vee (where those little tails come in handy to grab on to). It didn't have to be perfect at the point since the overlay covers it, but mine turned out pretty well anyway. Probably precisely because it IS covered up. Hah.

Now I'm off to run some errands, including a stop a Joann's for another black invisible zip for that black skirt above which mocks me. I'll get some me-modeled pics of the recent new makes soon.

I also almost forgot that this top is actually a "muslin," so I'll be cutting the originally planned solid knit top when I get back. Maybe I'll have TWO new outfits for next week.

Don't forget to change your clocks tonight! I think I'll be sewing for that extra hour. :-)