My 'Around the World in 21 Days' Dress...

I can't believe I finished this dress last week!  Has anyone ever mentioned how hard it is to do sewing while traveling?  It truly is an intercontinental dress.  The fabric was a gift from a former colleague and is all the way from Pakistan.  It's an amazing looseweave silk wool blend that has tiny little flowers on it and is the most amazing teal colour I have ever seen.  I used it for this week's 'Rose in Spanish Harlem' theme over at the Sew Weekly.

The pattern is all the way from Adey in Singapore! Early on in the Sew Weekly challenge year we did a little pattern swap.  I sent her a 1940's sundress and she sent me this fabulous re-issue Butterick sheath dress pattern:

This dress was constructed on four different sewing machines in three cities during the past week!  I started out on my sister's new Singer machine on the west coast.  I managed to cut out the fabric and make and underline the bodice.  The second sewing machine was my friend Kristen's that I borrowed for two hours when I was visiting her in DC.  On her machine I managed to sew the skirt together.  The third sewing machine was at the Sewing Studio in New York City.  I managed to sew the bodice to the skirt and iron the hem and baste in the zipper.  The final sewing machine was Oona's very own Kenny the morning of our fabulous meet-up!  On Kenny I finished sewing in the zipper and sewing the hem and did a slapdash job of tacking down the facings (too slapdash because one of my zipper ends was still poking out the top back...grrrrr...)!

The construction of the bodice is actually very nifty.  You sew the facing onto the bodice front and back in one go leaving about 1.5 inches at the top of each shoulder strap.  Then you sew the shoulder straps together in one continuous seam.  That automatically attaches the facing and all you have to do is slipstitch a very small area at the shoulder! Et Viola--completely finished neckline and armholes! I loved it!!

I made the view with the sash made out of red Kona cotton for that Paso Doble look.  The sash instructions were a bit hard to follow and I'm not sure I got the pleats on the sash right but I just sort of winged it.  My only regret with the dress is that I graded the bodice to be slightly larger than the pre-cut size 12 measurement and I don't think I needed to do that.  So it gapes slightly in the front unless I rest the shoulder straps at the very tippy edge of my shoulders. lol.  I was thinking one fix for that might be to take a tiny tuck at each corner of the bodice front and then cover it with two fancy dress clips!

I wore this dress out in New York City with the lovely Oona, Meg and Mena(photos above by Mena and Oona).  Check out Oona's post for more details on that adventure!

  Here's a sneak peak of the four of us (from left to right: Oona, Meg, Mena and me).

David and I took photos inspired by Lena Hoschek clothes as photographed by Lupi Spuma.  I first found out about Lena's clothes on Q's Daydream Vintage blog.  So we thought we would try out something similar and I really like how the pictures came out!  So much fun!!

 And of course, our kitties were all curious about what we were doing!!! :-) Such cuties!