Made by a Fabricista: The Night and Day Dresses!

My black dress, made with some Milly floral taffeta

Hi everybody, I just love wearing dresses during summertime! For this month's post I was supposed to post only one project, but finally decided to play with two gorgeous fabrics Fabric Mart has currently in stock. Here am I with 2 looks created from the same pattern: one dress for night time and one dress for daytime!

 Night time: The Milly floral taffeta dress

Aren't you in love with all the Milly fabric collection FM has posted recently? Well, I am. As soon as I saw this gorgeous floral taffeta I knew I had to do something with it! This black taffeta has a thin, somewhat crisp hand, an features beautiful embroidered flowers in a neon pink shade that add a lot of visual interest to the fabric. Like it, want it? It's still available here! There is also another colorway, here.

Taffeta is a bit challenging to sew - it has no give at all so you have to be very precise in the cutting and assembling. Also, the seam ripper and the taffeta don't like each other, ripping a seam can leave marks not to mention the risk of making holes. It also has the tendency to fray quite a bit, so I serged the side seams and bottom seams as soon as it was possible. What helps with keeping the seams light is to use lightweight thread like Gutermann Mara 150 for serging, and of course a Microtex sharp needle is in order for precision and good looking stitches.

For this dress I decided to use a TNT pattern (please see at the bottom) - better when you want to avoid over manipulating the fabric and dealing with lots of adjustments.  I thought I had vowed to retire that pattern since I've probably made it 20+ times in my sewing career, but I thought that with a slight modification it would be perfect for my Milly taffeta.

Do you spot the design change I made to this dress? You're right, I raised the neckline and gave the shoulders more of a cut out look. This is a dress I'll be wearing for a night out on the town or for cocktail type events.

Here is a close up so you can appreciate the texture and color - I love this fabric!

Daytime: The white linen dress

I've been wanting to add a white linen dress to my summer wardrobe for a while 'cause it feels so fresh! This is a piece of linen I stashed last fall during one the amazing FM's sale, and white is in stock as we speak. You guessed it, this is the ever popular designer linen!

It has a beautiful hand and drape, just perfect for a dress.  Since white is a bit see through, I decided to fully line it and I used some Bemberg rayon I had on hand, in a delicate skin tone shade (you can catch a glimpse of it below). I don't know for you, but Bemberg is not a fabric I enjoy working with - it shifts, distorts easily and is a bit hard to manipulate. Once you're done though you're so happy you took the trouble - a lining makes a garment look and feel so much better!

My white dress, made with the Designer quality linen

On this picture you can catch a glimpse of the skin tone color lining

I completed this project just last week and wore the dress as soon as it was finished. I don't think I ever owned a white linen dress before. Isn't it nice to be able to sew the garments you want at a fraction of the price of the equivalent in RTW?

The pattern

If you're curious to see which pattern I used for both dresses, it's Style 1528, a vintage pattern from the end of the 80's. I added back neckline darts to take care of some gaping, and I raised the neckline and removed some width at the outer armhole to get the cutout look of the black dress.

I hope you are having fun with your summer sewing, and see you in August for my next post. As usual, thanks Fabric Mart for providing us with great fabric, and thanks to you for reading!

Virginie

from

Jazz Couture