I just finished a craft marathon and vacation. In the midst of crafting 23 champagne coozies for my sister-in-law darcy’s wedding, I decided to sew an entire dress together.

The dress is the Carnival Dress from Twinkle Sews.

This dress pattern is fairly complex, but I thought I could manage it. It took a week of nights just to tape together the 78-page pattern and cut it out. I ordered the material from Twinkle Living. The material is a shimmery-satin-silik ribbon print, and it is out of stock again!

The book says you need 2 yards for all of the sizes. It took the education and skills my computer science degree to arrange the pattern in the most efficient way. I ran into an error with piece #3: the piece should be mirrored (for size 12 [determined by bust size!]). When I was done cutting, attempted to piece and found the errant part, I did not have enough fabric with the length-wise grain. I had to cut the correct piece at a cross-wise grain because it was the only piece large enough!

It was also my first time working with shirring, liner, and an invisible zipper. I totally loved using the basting stitch to help put the shirring in place. I thought it was weird that the pattern had all of these internal interfacing parts, and then the lining covered them on the inside, creating 3 layers of fabric, but I don’t know what to suggest to make the order better.

And then we come to the invisible zipper installation. I have a Janome sewing machine. It is the high-end Hello Kitty model. The invisible zipper foot I purchased (AND THE ONLY ONE IN TOWN) turns my sewing machine into a band saw or jigsaw of sorts. The back screw of the needle hit the top of the invisible zipper foot! The machine would not even go unless I could put it on high speed right away. Then, once the process started, I had THREE stitches before the screw on the back of the needle shaft knocked the invisible zipper foot off. It was a challenge, and the seam looks hellacious, but it did the job.

The dress was really fun to wear to the wedding. I thought the straps would be weird, but they fit perfectly. The wedding was in the Catskill Mountains, where the temperature dips below 50F at night in August! I threw a jacket on over the dress and some black skinny jeans underneath, and kept on dancing!

I love it when I get a baby shower invitation and there is a sale at the craft store. I found a fun batik print, which is a sort of perfect gender-neutral baby stain repellent. The Purl Bee has an excellent tutorial for a Swaddling Blanket, so I decided to make one for the shower I’m going to tonight.

The project doesn’t take long to complete, but lets you allow a fun personal touch. I washed, cut, and pinned the materials yesterday and assembled them today. I’ve got a few more baby showers to attend, and will definitely be doing this project again.

Also, Hancock Fabrics had a really nice sale this weekend. They have some really nice affordable organic cotton. I was surprised and impressed by this!

This wrap skirt appeared as a Craftzine podcast last year. Sites like Burdastyle and Fitzpatterns now offer large patterns that have been broken into multiple pages. Here is the free PDF pattern for the wrap skirt.

Each pattern must be printed. This pattern had 24 pages that had to be taped together before cutting! This was my initial choice of fabric, but then I soon changed my mind to an Amy Butler Rowan eyelash patter a very good friend got for me.

This was a fun skirt to make. I was surprised that it tied in the back, but the knot hasn’t bothered me so far. This skirt can sit much lower on the hips than the wrap dress I made a month ago. The kangaroo pouch seemed weird at first, but is perfect for stashing an mp3 player, keys, or mobile phone. This is a great weekend project!

Here’s the finished product. I bought the pattern because it looks very much like a Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress without the $300 price tag.

Looks like I’m going to have to buy one dress and modify this pattern to fit that one. For Vogue 8379, it seems as though the people who write patterns were not aware waistlines dropped to the hip many years ago. Almost all of my clothes have a hip waistline, or I have a few dresses that have a bust waistline (empire waist is the technical term).

I’ll model this dress soon, but I need some work before that. Wearing clothes with a low waistline makes you forget about your lower stomach and how painfully high waist jeans fit and how the addition of a zipper and snap closure to that part of the body adds pounds to your look. There is a sort of laziness that comes from it too. That part of the stomach becomes unencumbered, and even naturally starts sticking out. Wow. I really think I was holding my breath through most of the late 80s/early 90s.

My dress form does not have this problem. She is super busty and holds most of her weight on her hips. She also has purple skin and white hair.

As always click to enlarge!

Again, improvements for this dress include adding 3-4 inches to the torso to get that dropped waistline look, or so at least the tie goes over the part my stomach that sticks out the most. Also, next time, if there is a next time, I’m getting a lighter fusible interfacing. The lining of the wrap feels like cardboard. Finally, this project was my first time double stitching! I’ve heard a serger or overlock machine eliminate that. Some of my seams look AWESOME, some not so much.

Now to what I liked about the dress. The collar and the open cuffs were very simple to make and adds so much more finishing and feel to the dress. The tie closure is really easy to make, better than dealing with buttons or zippers for me at this point.

More pictures soon. Tomorrow: new batch of coozies!

I’m almost finished with a wrap dress from the Vogue 8379 pattern. I used some red jersey, and my double stitching skills pretty much suck.

Vogue sizing has always been a little weird, but it is because their sizes have not been deflated over the years like regular clothing. This also means everything is cut with a high waist. Style-wise, it appears the trends are pushing back to the higher waist, no matter what Jessica Simpson tries to do to remind us it is a bad trend.

If I make another dress, I will definitely add 3-4 inches to the torso length above the ties.

Have a bunch of end trimming to do. I really like hiding ends better with knitting or crochet. Sewing just seems so permanent and I’ve spent too much time ripping seams for this project. I’ve got the hem to sew and that should be about it.