Male Devon Sewing: Lace overlay Polka-dot sheath dress

I can't believe it is September already! Where has the time gone? I started this blog in January and I'm still going! Well here is my first post of this month.....Not a jacket or shirt but a dress!

I recently posted about being asked to make a dress for my friend Hattie, well tonight she came over with her mum Sophie, (who also has a new dress but I'll save that for the next post!) and her brother (a new shirt in the future perhaps?) to try on the dress.

Hattie visited a few weeks back to choose
a dress to wear to a wedding. We went through various patterns, options and styles and she finally decided on a lovely sheath style dress. The pattern she chose was the New Look 6261 sheath dress. She wanted the rounded neckline (A) but with the shorter sleeve (D) and without a waist band/belt.

We spent a while looking at various fabrics and finally Hattie decided on a lovely stretch crepe in Cerise from Carringtons

She then chose a polka-dot Tulle, again from Carringtons in Ivory for the over-dress.

As with all New Look patterns, it was easy to construct but I did need to perform a full bust adjustment FBA (I will cover the FBA in another post later this month) but needless to say, Hattie doesn't have the standard 'pattern B cup' bust size. The only other adjustment was to lengthen the dress by 2" below the knee.

I decided to make the dress in two separate pieces rather than fixing the Tulle to the Crepe, as one. I wanted the Tulle to float over the base dress and hang rather than be fixed to the seams and darts of the main dress fabric. The Crepe handled like a dream, cutting and sewing beautifully, the Tulle...well Tulle has a mind of its own but with careful marking, cutting and patience it went together very well. It took ages to get the polka-dots to line up accurately along the zip line!

Getting the Tulle to float was easy enough to achieve with it only being fixed at the shoulder seams, back seam/zip. I didn't put any darts or shaping into the Tulle at all: After fixing to the shoulder seam I carefully stretched it to conform to dress shape whilst on the Tailors Dummy. The Tulle was then pinned and cut to shape before sewing up. (double 1/16th inch seam)

The dress was finished with bust length sleeves of Tulle alone and I am really happy with the end result. I think Hattie was happy too! No adjustments were needed, which is always nice as it meant the FBA worked and the dress fits really well. I'm looking forward to seeing more photos of Hattie at the wedding.