August Dress

After a huge amount of work on my dissertation last week, I started sewing this dress on Friday after massive stress-induced migraines and sleeping half of Friday in a drugged-up state. I had migraines the rest of the weekend, as well. It was not fun and I demand a do-over weekend.

Edit: This is McCall’s M6124. View E.

I was extremely happy that I not only started the dress, but completed it. The pattern is listed as easy and it was very much that. I managed to only make two errors: sewing the collar and sewing the sleeve. It was my error for both and not the pattern. For the collar, I read the directions for view A, followed them, and then angrily tore it out when I realized I was working on view E. In my defense, I was on migraine pills all weekend.

The plan was to wear it with a belt and I love the look. I did have to add a hook in between the second and third button to prevent button popping. This is a common issue I have with button-up shirts.

Without the belt, the dress looks rather blah and shapeless. Although, the princess seams are really flattering. I love princess seams. 50% of my dresses have princess seams.

I’m extremely pleased with these buttons. They are an orange-red framing white and I love them. They really pop on the dress and make me love it. I love buttons, though. I think I spent an hour looking at the buttons trying to pick the perfect set out for this dress. The other ones I saw were an indigo blue and had a unique shape to them, but I am glad I picked these ones.

It was my first time using the button foot on my sewing machine. It was so easy to use. I barely had to touch the fabric once I put it in place. Actually, I didn’t touch the fabric once I put it in place.

All in all, the sewing took me about 9 hours after ripping out a few things and sewing them right the second time. I had trouble with the sleeves, too, because my fabric bunched up and I was sewing too fast. I was more careful the second time sewing the one sleeve and didn’t have any issues on the other sleeve.

The sleeves ended up too tight, but that was an issue with the pattern. The size was great for all other areas of my body, but the sleeves were made a little too tight. The bust was perfect. Luckily, I have fabric left over from the purple plaid to do an alteration for my next shirt dress. I can also fix the green, but the sleeves aren’t so tight that I need to alter it. I might try lifting some weights first.

I also figured out how to fix the July dress so that I like it more. I cut up the sleeves on the weekend and plan to sew them up tonight. I also have to fix a purple stretch dress that I split on the seam. I sewed it with a previous machine that didn’t have a stretch stitch. I’m excited to use that tonight. I have a ton of stiches on that machine that I haven’t touched. I’ll post on that tomorrow.

I thought about quilts way too much this weekend and about men’s clothing.

I’ve had an idea for a quilt for my bed for over a year that I would love to get started on.

Does anyone know of any good computer programs for creating a quilt pattern?

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