TMS Frocktober: A birdy dress all grown up?

I really enjoy following along with The Monthly Stitch, while it is clear I am fairly rubbish at regular blogging, I often do complete the challenge (and even within the month), I just rarely post. I think this is a feature of blogging not being a habit, so I fail to include it when budgeting my time.

Anyway, my goal for Frocktober was to complete at least one dress with a view to entering at least one competition, meaning I was aiming to blog at least once. This is actually the second dress I have finished, but the first, well, if it sees the light of the internet, it will be as a miss. I have worn it out of the house, once, but honestly, I think it is probably best suited to charity where someone who can pull it off can wear it.

I definitely prefer it with the belt (or a contrast waist)

But I digress.

This is Deer and Doe's Reglisse dress. I loved the simple lines of this dress and I think in a nice cotton it looks so crisp and fresh, which it was I would do for another version (yes, there will be another!). I ordered the pattern during the time it was on sale before Frocktober and I was very pleasantly surprised when it arrived here in the antipodes in less than two weeks after it left France.

The instructions are quite clear and I sewed this up in an evening (well, I did do a bit of quick Friday morning pre-work sewing to insert the elastic), I think it took no more than four hours, including pattern tracing and a number of small child related interruptions.

The pattern is clearly printed on nice sturdy paper - the pattern tracers dream.

 

Birdies

Fabric-wise I chose a polyester with nice drape from the clearance stack at Spotlight. The fabric has more drape than the recommended fabrics for this pattern, but I saw a lovely rayon version on Pattern Review, so I decided to take a chance. I quite like the print (I am a complete sucker for a bird print, luckily I have children for the times when what I have purchased is completely inappropriate for my age and lifestyle) and the fabric holds a press reasonably well, but other than that, it doesn't have much to recommend it, I'm afraid.

Look at all that skirt and it's covered in birds, woo hoo!

It is slippery and plastic feeling and quite prone to static. Plus - and this is something I've never really had to deal with before, it just wouldn't keep markings. Usually when I have trouble marking, I pull out washable textas, but because I wanted to wear this the next morning, it wasn't an option (imagine, heading off to work with big black texta lines pointing along the bust darts, classy) I think I paid about $3 a metre for this fabric and that is probably an appropriate price point. I will make this dress again in a lovely cotton, probably a voile, thus avoiding all these issues.

Because everyone loves taking pictures of their back

In terms of the pattern, I mostly followed the instructions, the small changes I made were, that:

• I didn't topstitch the collar, because my thread didn't quite match (red, but not the right red) and I didn't want to draw attention to that;
• I didn't use bias to hem the dress, given this kind of polyester's propensity to pucker, my concerns about the length of the dress, and the fact that I wanted to wear the dress to work for casual Friday, I chose instead to do a narrow hem (about 1 cm, folded over twice) and machine stitched it; and
• (this was unplanned), even though I was very careful, I still managed to end up with the slot for the elastic on the outside of the dress (I'm so clever like that), so I just zigzagged it shut once the elastic was inserted.

I used packaged bias for the collar, because I had no interest at all in trying to make bias out of this shifty sneaky fabric.

I made no changes to fit and I was quite pleased overall. It was nice not to have to worry about bust proportions in a pattern. I'm still tossing up whether for a future version I would lengthen the bodice a bit, the waist feels a bit high to me (but it doesn't look as high as it feels), but that could just be because I wear more skirts than dresses, with lower waists. If I didn't lengthen the bodice, I would probably lengthen the skirt, simply to be able have a deeper hem, which I think would be nice in a different fabric.

Oops, slip-flash

The main challenge I had was the fabric, but I did know that going in to it, so I had decided all along that this would probably be a test garment, with the hope that it would be wearable. Given that goal, I was quite pleasantly surprised at how it turned it. I was even complimented by my boss, so that's always nice and a good sign, I think. I'm not sure how much wear it will get now, given the weather is heading towards very warm already, but I think in Autumn, it will definitely get some use.

My toddlerboss and I, she graciously agreed to me making this dress for myself.