Friday 31 March 2017

stretch silk Sewaholic Davie

I planned, long ago, to make Davie out of a different fabric.
Plus I swear I had already written this blog post.  Or not?  I'm having deja vu as I write it, feels like again. 

I decided at some point that the initial fabric, which was a beautiful lilac merino, was too heavy and didn't have enough stretch so I changed my mind about using it.  I think also I didn't quite have enough fabric for the flare of the skirt.  This fabric is stretch silk from Ukraine.  I bathed it in gelatin thinking that would be a good idea.  And I decided I would make this for my cousin as the bright colours (as much as I love them) would suit her better than me.  Plus she lost a silk dress recently so it seemed apropos.  Luckily she is the same size as I am.

I cut a size 4 at the top tapering down to a 0 around the hips.  I just softened the hip line, and I did so only on the curved pieces, not on the straight ones.  I found as I was pulling the princess seams together that there was so little stretch and I blamed it on the silk, so I washed it to get the gelatin out but it didn't help.  So some seams were quite challenging.  I did keep the keyhole, although I debated leaving it out.

I made a standard jersey binding for the neck, but I folded over the arms to hem them.  This turned out pretty messy.  The hem is also my standard job and is a total mess, but the high low hem is in so I'm not too fussy.

End thoughts: stretch silk is too floppy for this pattern.  Because of the skirt flare, it needs a knit with some body.  As many have said it's quite large for its size too, and the top half is almost a bit too big.  It's not a very neat effort but it is wearable and the pattern distracts from a lot.

I'm not sure how much I referred to the instructions but I think they were ok.  This dress kind of represents the end of Sewaholic to me - right before Tasia left, when the amazingness of the early projects - the Lonsdale, Minoru, Cambie - just couldn't be reproduced. 

Sadly my father, who took these photos in the midst of packing hell, and who has been totally competent at taking vacation holiday photos good enough to frame and put on the wall, can't take focused pictures of me in a dress.  Sorry.  Maybe my cousin will provide.









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