I REALLY WANTED A RED DRESS!
I hadn't had a red dress in many, many years.
I've had and made red jackets and blouses, but no red dress.
I even whined about it on FaceBook!
LOL!
Then lo and behold...I found some red Sophia Ponte knit in my stash that I'd purchased from Vogue Fabrics a few years ago! And the cutting began! I initially wanted a fit and flare dress, but I did not have enough fabric and I was determined that I would not not buy more red fabric. This just had to work! So no fit and flare!
While cutting, I decided to use some black Telio Scuba knit for the sleeves. The fabric was purchased from Fabric.com and was left over from the last dress I made for my daughter.
These two fabrics played nice together, both stitched well separately and together. Most of the construction was done on my serger with 4 threads.
I used and hacked McCall's 7501. I made view A with the bell sleeves from view D. I also lowered the front and back neckline. I've come to really like the look of lower, slightly curved back necklines. If you take a look at some of my previous makes, you will see the lower back necklines as I almost always lower them on tops and dresses...so this dress was no exception.
I ran into a problem with the sleeves! I rarely have to shorten the sleeves of commercial patterns, but these ragland sleeves were much too long! Of course I didn't discover it until after the sleeves were added and I'd tried it on. Yes! I do several fittings for myself! 😄
Then looking at the sleeves and trying the dress on a few times, I realized that I couldn't simply shorten them. If I shortened them the 3 inches from the bottom that I needed to, I would essentially have no bell.
So I put the dress aside for a day to think about it. This allowed me time to put on my engineer's cap (aren't we all engineers in this craft?) and come up with a solution.
I decided/realized that I needed to shorten it somewhere above the bell. So that is what I finally did. I tried it on again and marked it for the cut at the mid bicep point. But who wants a seam in the middle of their sleeve? That would not have worked at all. LOL!
The engineer side of my brain told me to hack the sleeves by adding a red strip of fabric at the point I'd cut the sleeve. Sew...that is exactly what I did! And I'm pleased to say that I was excited with the result!
I finished the neckline by first stabilizing it with stay tape, then added a self binding, a narrow hem on the sleeves and a blind stitch on the hemline.
After I finished the dress, I heard about The Little Red Dress Project on Instagram. Sew...because we all know that I love challenges, I entered my dress in the challenge. This challenge was to bring awareness to sewing. I couldn't resist! 💕
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