New Dress in the Making!

This last weekend I have started working on my new dress for my mother! I have yet to name it. I am consitering Purple Ruffle Dress or Purple Wrap Dress. You decide!

I am making McCalls 6024 View B (That is the purple one on the pattern envelope.

I have already cut out the fabric and put part of the bodice together

I was quite angry when I found out that this pattern had 8 darts! (But overjoyed when I learned it didn't need a hem!) I finished the bodice ones with no hassle though! I was very surprised. Perhaps on my houndstooth dress, I was just having a bad day. By the way, the R's on the boobs are just to let me know which side is the right side of the fabric :)

Close-ups of the fantastic hassle free darts!

I started working on the ruffle that goes around the neck and I have to encase it in double fold bias tape which I am a little nervous about because I dont know exactly how to use it, I have only used single fold bias tape. I plan on looking up some tutorials online to make sure I get it right.

So, tell me what you think the name of this dress should be!

Houndstooth Dress - Finally Finished

YESS!!!! The dress that I have been working on for well over  month is finally done. The pressure of having to get it finished and another dress before April definently helped me speed up. I did have a few issues in the process but it surprisingly WAS NOT the hem, it was the zipper. The first time I put it in, it was a complete and utter mess. One side was longer than the other and it went all crooked and basically, I had a sewing melt-down. I set it down and worked on it the next day. And the second try turned out a billion times better than the first.

     Sorry I havent blogged in forever but now you know what I have been working on!

It's such a relief to have this dress done. The relief won't last long though because my next dress project will be started very quickly. Then after my trip, I have to make another dress for my graduation. I swear, I never get a break. :P

So, back to the process of dressmaking. The bodice as I have mentioned before took me forever because of the darts and everything but the skirt was very easy. You already know what happened with the zipper. The hem was actually pretty good besides the fact that I ended up having to hem the lining twice because the first time I hemmed the shell 2" then the lining 1". Totally didn't think that one through, haha. There was a large chunk of pink lining at the bottom which I would've been okay with if the right side of the lining was on the outside. However I wanted the softness and prettyness of the lining on the inside. So I had to hem it again.
The back hemming ended up being about an inch shorter than the front of the dress but to be perfectly honest I was so done with this dress there was no way I was going to fix it.

Another issue I had was when I was done the neckline ended up being way too large. It was practically falling off my shoulders. I don't know if you can see it in the picture above but I added some shoulder darts (yes, DARTS! Thankfully these ones were SOO much easier)

   Thats pretty much it for this dress. I really like the final outcome of this dress. The fabric is really as great as I had originally invisioned it.

    My parting shot: (it twirls very well :))

PS: I am obsessed with Avril Lavigne's new album, Goodbye Lullaby. Everyone should go buy it!!!!