indigotiger's Entry What did you make and how did you play with the stripesan Everyday Dress. I had a lot of fun changing the directions of the striped fabric, bias on the bodice fronts, horizontal on the collar, inner button band, and back yoke, vertical on the bodice back, outer button band gores, and sleeves. The vertical stripes on the gores form chevrons where the seams meet. I played with various options for the place where the button band and collar met, to find the one I liked the best.
Pattern used my "Everyday Dress" from my small collection of heavily adapted and transformed patterns. I think that the gored skirt of this one originally came from a Sandra Betzina pattern, the front bodice from a Tom and Linda Platt pattern, and the rest of the pattern is self drafted
A short description on how you made it/problems overcome/etc.
I had been saving this striped black/grey/blue fabric for some years, and in the interim, I somewhat expanded in size, which meant that I didn't have
quite enough fabric... I laid out the pattern pieces and determined that if I made the skirt panels a little shorter, changed my usual peter pan collar to a straight band convertible collar, cut the button bands from the scraps in two different directions, and pieced the pockets so that only the area visible was from the striped fabric, I could still get a wearable dress.
I knew that adding a decorative band of fabric to the bottom edge of the skirt would be simple, as I have done that before, to good effect. I used the fabric from a much beloved and worn out black/grey polkadot Everyday Dress for both the hemline trim, and most of the pocket pieces...
There was barely enough of the stripey fabric left to cut out pieces large enough to overlap the size of the pocket openings, so I chose to simply zig zag the fabric in place on both raw edges, holding the edges down neatly onto the polkadot fabric. Any other seam treatment would have created either stiffness or a ridge right at my hipline. Using the "fashion fabric" for only part of the pocketing is a technique I have only seen in things like jeans, and have never tried before.
The collar was probably the most fun part of the project (despite my having to draft out a plain band collar). Before sewing it all together, I tried both ways of arranging the button band fabric, horizontal or vertical stripes on the outside. My initial thought of horizontal on the outside didn't work as well, since the horizontal stripes looked odd with the bias stripes. I am quite pleased with the way the small lapels turned out, and my having to piece the bias binding for the neckline meant that I could have the direction of the bias on the lapels be mirrored.
My new stripey dress has proven to be a good addition to my wardrobe, and will be useful in all but deep summer, either by itself or in winter as a middle layer with knitwear under it and a pinafore over it