Watermelon Dress

Welcome to my final post for Sophisique Noir's Red & Black week.  Today's post is New Look 6900, view A.  The fabric here came from Fabric.com, of course.  I acquired it on my last fabric binge.  The name is Metro Market Watermelon Slices.  Okay, okay, so it's red and black and pink - pink is pastel red!  It counts!

Regular readers know of my love-hate relationship with pockets in dresses (tl;dr: I love having pockets, but hate that they bulge and look like crap).  This pattern's pockets are external, so I decided to take the plunge and include them for once.

You'll also notice a ruffle on the pocket.  The pattern did not call for this; I had a sudden urge to use up some of the pink fabric in my stash.  (It came from the much-mentioned Daisy-Head Mayzie costume.)



The facing details for both the pocket and the bodice (to the right) are attached in an atypical matter; you can see here that the right side of the facing is facing the wrong side of the bodice.  Because it is such an unusual method, I had to reread the instructions several times to ensure I was doing the right thing.  After these are sewn together, the facing is flipped over to the other side.

I learned my lesson from the coffee dress: do not straight stitch on elastic, even if the pattern calls for it!  You can see that I made a casing here and threaded the elastic through, catching it at the ends. 

I added a ruffle to the bottom too, using the same fabric.  Unlike yesterday, when I stole pieces from another pattern, here I just cut a piece that was twice as long as the edge of the skirt, gathered it, and sewed it on.

The dress is cute, but I fear it looks a bit like an apron, and would even more so if I hadn't extended the length by three inches.

I wanted to add another ruffle to the straps as well.  I cut and gathered the fabric, and was about to pin it on when I changed my mind.  I'm not sure why I 180ed.  Maybe I didn't want it to look too much like the cherry dress?  Anyone out there with any thoughts on adding ruffles to the straps?

Thanks for reading my R & B week posts.  Looking forward to seeing you again next year!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry Bomb

We're in the home stretch of Sophisitque Noir's Red & Black week, and I have a final blast from the past for you (today's) and a new outfit (tomorrow).  I apologize for the quality of pictures for today and tomorrow: the batteries in the camera were dying and I had to take them as quickly as possible.

The pattern here is McCall's 5094 in view F; if that sounds familiar to you, it might be because I used the straps from this in the Space Invaders dress.

I believe that I made this last spring, and I wanted to make it out of just one fabric (view D, basically).  However, when I went shopping for fabric, nothing really struck my fancy.  (Must have been before JoAnn's releases their Halloween fabrics for the year. :D)  This cherry and dot print I finally picked was cute, but I thought an entire dress would have been overwhelming. I couldn't resist its cute rockabilly/gothabilly charm though, so I went with view F.

Though a dress entirely out of that print would have been too much, I thought just the band and straps weren't enough, hence the ruffles in the polka dots.  They came from Simplicity 2325, an Alice in Wonderland costume that I adapted into Daisy-Head Mayzie for a friend of mine.








As for the pattern itself, it wasn't too bad at all.  I would recommend this for an advanced beginner.  The technical challenges were:

• inserting a zipper
• a lining
• a bit of gathering under the bust
• a lot of gathering if you go my route and add ruffles

I wish I could have taken pictures of the full outfit, but the husband wasn't at home and my self-photography skills are quite lacking.  The pictures don't show how fun this dress really is.  I get a lot of flattering comments whenever I wear it, which I inevitably follow with "...and it's fun for twirling!" and then promptly spin around in a few circles.  And then I get some weird looks (which, to be honest, is not a rare occurrence for me).




And for good measure (not the original, sorry):