Good golly this one was tricky. After all the aligning of darts and growing on of sleeves (not to mention zippers), I approached this dress with sangfroid. How hard could such a simple dress be to make? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: elastic.
Elastic has a mind of its own
My toile was the first time I had ever sewn shirring before. Shirring is where you put elastic in the bobbin (bottom thread) and have ordinary thread in the top spool. You then sew in straight lines, relatively close together to get the desired bodice length. The elastic on the wrong side of your fabric springs back, giving you an elasticated bodice which will stretch to fit the body, giving a nice contour and holding itself up.
Because elastic is … elastic, it can stretch out more or less depending on the tension of your thread and the tension you put on the fabric as it moves through the feed dogs (the little feet that push your fabric through as you sew). It took me several goes to get the whole process moving smoothly.
I also realised that my tension was completely all over the place with the front of my bodice, but only after I had finished shirring both it and the back (image above). Much painful unpicking ensued. So much unpicking.
Even once I had the tension right, I didn’t realise that I was curving my lines a bit until I joined the back and front pieces together. Did all my shirring line up? No, no it did not. It was, however, close enough to pass muster. Although the perfectionism in me died a little.
What would I do differently?
I didn’t read the instructions as closely as I should, which lead to a few ‘Oh botheration’ moments. Working with a PDF pattern means that the format and instructions given is different to a standard commercial pattern, which caught me off guard a bit.
I also got a bit lazy around the toile, and thought I got the hang of shirring faster than I really did. If I had had enough toile fabric to make the whole garment, I think that would have been a benefit, rather than just doing some bodice work.
For this fabric, underlining the entire dress would have been better. I realised after I had shirred the bodice that while it doesn’t really need a lining, having one would make it a tad safer. You can’t wear any dark coloured underwear with this dress as it currently stands. Not the end of the world, but it would have been nicer to not have to think about it.
Instead, I ended up creating a skirt lining which I attached via an extra line of shirring at the waist. This works well, but I think it would have been much easier to underline the whole thing and be done with it. Will definitely do that next time, especially if using a lighter fabric.
The sewing costs
As part of the challenge, I’m tracking how much these projects really cost. Below is a breakdown for the romantic dress. All prices are in Australian dollars.
- PDF pattern from Etsy: $10.88
- Printing costs from Officeworks: $10
- Striped 100% linen: $67.80
- Shirring elastic (used 1 of 3 packs): $3
- Toile fabric (purchased previously): $6.30
TOTAL: $97.98
I already had white thread and 0.5 cm elastic from previous projects, so I don’t count that here. For the lining, which I needed to add, I used some 100% cotton fabric which I had left over from another project. There was just enough to meet modesty requirements but it felt good to use all that fabric and not waste much.
This dress came out $7.30 cheaper than the acorn dress. I was a little surprised, given it used more fabric, but I think not need to pay for zips and buttons made the difference. There is also a bit of fabric left over, which I made be able to make into one of my tops, which would be handy.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with that price. Buying a custom made 100% linen dress for less than $100 isn’t too easy to do. However, it is interesting to see that both dresses are still around the $100 mark, which isn’t particularly cheap. You’re certainly not saving massively when you make your own clothes, unless you take into consideration the tailored aspect and (hopefully) the better quality of fabric.
[…] working on a small made-by-me capsule wardrobe for summer. Thus far, I’ve complete the two dresses and have started work on one of the two shirts. The, as yet untouched, skirt is the final […]