Cashmerette Darturner Dress and Dartmouth top

A while ago, my fellow CSC editor, Jessica, shared her Dartmouth/half circle skirt dresses on her blog. I had also seen a few other people share versions of this with the Dartmouth top and the Turner skirt. I knew I needed to try it.

So I did:

 

 

 

I added pockets to this dress. The Turner dress does have a pocket through a free expansion, but I decided to make my own pattern piece since I wanted the pocket to be held in place by the waist. I should have basted the pockets in place, because the serger knocked them off ever so slightly. My pocket fabric is a dark hunter green lightweight jersey. The bit of pocket showing is even on both sides with about a 1/4 inch of the pocket peaking out so it looks intentional and quite frankly you can’t tell at all since the fabric is a dark hunter green and black and the hunter green blends nicely.

Speaking of the fabric, it is a crepe knit that I got at a Buy 1 get 2 free sale through Fabricville.com. The fabric is actually printed on white crepe which makes for a weird white on the inside look, but no one will see it. It’s polyester knit and not breathable so it will be fine for winter but going into Summer probably not, but I prefer bright colours in the Summer.

To do this “hack,” I just cut the Dartmouth top at the waistline and popped it on the Turner skirt. Any discrepancies in size were fixed with stretch fabric and elastic at the waistline.

I made the whole dress in about 2 hours for a party the next day, because “I had nothing to wear” (*cough* an excuse to sew).

The very next week after that, I made another Dartmouth top in a white hacci knit. The knit ended up being a bit see-through so I also made a Concord tank top to wear underneath in a lightweight knit fabric.

 

 

 

With the extra stretch and low recovery of the hacci knit, there are some strange fit issues with this version, but I don’t mind. It’s a comfortable sweater top to wear. Please excuse the crap hem. I was having tension issues on my serger at the time so it was stretching stuff out, but I am too lazy to go back and fix it. For the most part, I wear this top with skirts so it doesn’t show.

I have a couple more projects cut out that I should sew first, but my brain is starting to turn to Summer sewing plans so I might have to lock myself to the sewing machine to get those done before the warmer weather hits.

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