Made By a Fabricista: Mock Wrap Dress Love

 

I love a wrap dress and I have now discovered the beauty of a mock wrap dress in this month's make! This style is so easy to wear and the fabric I used was a pleasure to sew.  With the mock wrap skirt I never have to worry about flashing anyone when I sit or walk.

 I am such a fan of a mock wrap dress for work wear and when wearing this dress to work recently received a lot of compliments.  This type of garment can be such a work horse since it's made from a durable ITY that I can throw in both the washer and dryer and it looks really cute with a jean jacket or knit wrap sweater- which are essential in a chilly office space.

The fabric is from designer label Tori Richard which I had to google to read up on.  It's a Hawaiian resort wear design house and I made a pin board with some of the dresses that Fabric Mart has carried the fabric for and you can find it here.  I always love to see a fabric made up into a garment before purchasing it since it gives you an idea of the scale of the print and how it can work on your body.  My fabric is a spongy ITY and there's only ten yards left. You can find it here.     

A few pattern fitting notes for New Look 6301:

•  I used the Palmer Pletsch tissue fitting method to fit the top portion of this dress and it helped me spot some problem areas before cutting out my fabric. Btw many of the same fitting tweaks that I did in this post are the same that I used for this dress.   

• I cut the neckline piece much shorter than the pattern called for so to get a snug fit around the neck but probably should take more of a wedge (I took a small wedge out) out of the front neckline piece in the future since I have rippling there. 
• The ties are really short in the pattern, I wanted mine long enough to wrap around and tie in back or in front. 
• I used a stretch knit needle and a zig zag stitch on my machine.
• I stabilized the shoulders with clear elastic and added knit tricot to the hem to avoid a wavy hemline.  I did a complete blog post here about ITY knits and this finishing technique.

You will have to excuse the fact that I am looking at my feet most of the time, I was being attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes!  I am very ready for our heat to break and clear out those nasty critters.  However, the upside of this is that my husband took about a billion pictures of me bending, swatting and slapping all those mosquitoes and you can see from the pictures above that the dress stays put really nicely even with all that action. 

If you remember there was a wrap dress challenge in the last Fabricistas Fashion Challenge and there were so many cute entries that you can view here.  And if you haven't noticed they just posted the contestants for this year's challenge. You can see all the contestants HERE.

One final note...

I originally intended the geometric print to become McCall 7407 but after making a muslin up from another Fabric Mart fabric I changed my mind.  The fabric is a slinky ITY with a shiny surface.  I used the dull, wrong side of the fabric as I preferred it.  I was very hopeful about this dress being both comfy and work appropriate but I am completely befuddled now.  I am on the fence about this dress but I wondered what you all thought.  Does it veer into muumuu territory or is it wearable?  Should I belt it and call it good or take a few inches off of the hemline?  Help!?#  Until later...

Thanks for reading!

Elizabeth 

I Sew, You Sew