The dress is for a student of mine, who's a district officer for one of our organizations. They require all of the girl officers to wear the same dress, and to ensure this they choose a pattern and fabric and ship a pattern/fabric package out to each girl.
It's obvious a non-seamstress put together the packages because this is the fabric they chose for the sheath dress:
In case you can't tell by the swatch above, that's a poly-cotton BROADCLOTH. Great.
And...while they included a zipper and one spool of matching thread, they neglected to include a hook/eye for the neckline (which will surely be necessary since it's a plain centered zipper, not an invisible zip).
I normally don't mind doing this little job because the pattern they choose is always simple to make and fit, and the girl officer is always a doll that I enjoy doing a favor for. (This year is no different.)
But broadcloth? Hmmm. If I felt better**/knew it would be worn more than once or twice, I'd throw in some turquoise lining I have in stash to make this sucker hang/wear better. But the truth is, it will only be worn twice, and I don't feel like fooling with the extra effort. I also don't have serger thread to match, and clearly one spool of regular thread is not enough to adequately finish inside seams either. Any suggestions would be mucho appreciated!
On the up side, it will be fun and interesting to sew something for a teeny tiny girl who needs next to no alterations! (Um, that's where the vicarious part comes into play.) It will truly be a novel adventure.
**ps...Thanks for the well-wishes over the week both here and by email. I'm on the mend, but have a slight complication. Nothing to worry about, I should be all better in a few days. Yay!
I appreciate every single one of you who reads the blog, especially the lurkers who are too shy to comment! Even when I am horribly remiss in saying so on a regular basis. ;) I actually have real guilt when I'm under the weather or too busy to post. So...
And bonus...a song for you!
Broadcloth? Seriously? Even if it is only to be worn infrequently? You would have thought they could have gotten some of Hancock's poly-linen look stuff, to hang and wear better. On sale, it wouldn't be much more. I have nothing against broadcloth and use it for the little ones and as linings for clothes, but as a sheath dress, I am not sure it will hang well. Have fun with it!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that you are doing better. Sorry I missed that! If you have enough of the fabric, self line the top...just the top. It will finish the main part of the dress. Use binding or flat fell the side seams on the rest of the dress.
ReplyDeleteI've been out of the loop so I hope you are okay!!! Don't know what "complication" you are talking about! Now you've got me worried.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, if it's only going to be worn twice, I'd just pink the seams and be done with it. She's hardly likely to want to wear it for months on end if it's made out of broadcloth. Well, I like Miss Carolyn's idea to self-line the top part too.
ReplyDeleteWord verification is "unerbed", which is where this dress will probably go when the young lady is finished with it.
Actually, this is a shame that they send such bad materials, because they young ladies could end up with something they really cherish wearing that also reminds them of the work they did. Instead it seems like it's mostly a throw-away. Well, mostly. I'm pretty sure your work will make it just a teensy bit too nice for that.
Wow... broadcloth. At least she is slim....
ReplyDeleteand I love that song. :)