Saturday, September 14, 2013

Look Up! Laurel Blue

Earlier this year I picked up the Laurel dress from Colette Patterns. I had been in a sewing slump and figured that this simple dress with only 4 pattern pieces would be a quick fix to pull me out.

Six months and one non-related skirt later and I finally started and finished it. I started with a different fabric choice but ended up going with something a little lighter and more summery.  I picked up this fabric from Fabric Mart.  Its currently my favorite place to buy fabric online, I like how they drape the fabric to give you a sense of what you're buying.  My fabric knowledge isn't good enough to buy things on name alone.  I think this is a Marc Jacobs fabric that I found on sale.  It's really thin and drapes well and my attempt to make it out of one layer was quickly shot down by my common sense.  And I'm glad I listened, this fabric is SUPER thin for a non silky.  Ripping out stitches left holes that had to be coaxed out. I underlined the dress in another Fabric Mart find and left the sleeves without the lining to lighten it up.




Pattern-wise, it was indeed simple.  The things that took the most time were the hand stitching and making my own bias tape.  Woo hoo for my first time making bias tape.  I found this really great tutorial that I previously pinned on Pinterest on creating appx 5 yards from a fat quarter and i immediately jumped to it. It was pretty simple expect I got some of the measurements wrong which made it so that I couldn't pull it through my bias tape folder thing.  Which meant I had the pleasure of hand folding and ironing the entire strip (yay me).  Thank goodness for TV, Netflix and the first season of 24.

I enclosed all my seams with store-bought bias tape and overlooked the arm sleeves. One thing to mention was the way the sleeves were built.  The pattern indicated to make 3 rows of basting stitches along the top which we then pulled on to ease the sleeve into its arm hole.  I had never seen that before and I enjoyed the finished look with tiny gathers across the top.

Bias Tape binding:  The black is the center back seam, the orange is single fold tape along the hem. 

Bias Tape binding:  Purple Double Fold Bias tape binding along the side seams.



The only alteration I made to the dress was to add darts on the front.  I'm not used to super look fitting dresses, especially if they're not cotton.  I was prepared to make this a simple shift dress but after pinning the front, I liked it so much and couldn't NOT add the darts.  I left them open to create a sort of pleat, which was inspired by A Handmade Wardrobe. I haven't yet decoded if I'm going to iron the pleats in or just let them fall where they may but I would like to add some sort of visual interest in order "seal" the end of the dart.




All in all, I really enjoyed sewing this dress and I've already worn it once and I'll be sure to wear it again. I hope you enjoyed my selfies!  The light wasn't what I wanted it and I don't know my camera well enough to compensate for it yet, but I'm working on it. Continuous improvement!

10 comments:

  1. really love how you added the darts!!!! Love the whole dress too!

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  2. Love this - beautiful fabric too. Well done!

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  3. This looks wonderful. I love the fabric you chose.

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  4. I love the pleats you created. It makes it more exciting then only a shift dress

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  5. Cute! Honestly, I didn't like that dress (too shapeless) . . . until you added pleats. You could put a self-fabric bow (a small, flat, tailored one - anything big and frouffy would overwhelm you and the dress, I think) or covered button at the base of each dart, to make it look more sealed/deliberate. But it's pretty as-is.

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  6. Coming from the Colette blog to say how much I love your version of this dress. I agree with the other comments - the pleats/darts make the dress. I've been passing on this dress b/c I don't care for its sack shape, but this totally changes it & makes very flattering & puts it back on my radar. Thank you!

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  7. Thanks all! I truly appreciate the love! Yeah, I don't typically gravitate towards shift dresses even though the I love the idea of the simplicity. I was going to leave as is but when I played with adding the darts, I just loved it even more and knew I would get so much more wear out of it.

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  8. Same as Samina, I thought I would never buy this pattern, but now that you've added darts, I love it. Thank you for sharing this with us! Beautiful fabric, too.

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  9. Cute dress. I like the fabric. I made a few Laurels ( they're on my blog ) and I HAD to add darts. I made one empire waisted. They just would not have looked right on me without the darts.

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  10. Your Laurel is lovely! The blue patterned fabric is quite stunning and the pattern is fabulous on you, especially with the addition of those darts! The combination really bring the Laurel alive and I love it...

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