Sew for Victory: New England Dress Finished!

I'm pleased to report that my second Sew For Victory project, The New England Dress is finished!  I had a reasonably good hair day, although ghastly weather (rainy, humid and not-quite-warm), but decided to forge ahead with photos anyway, because I wanted to be sure to get this posted before the end of the month.  

I started with this great floral cotton fabric from Joann that I bought online last fall.  I had intended to make a different pattern with it, but decided that the New England dress would be a better fit for this stage of my life.

Plus, I've been eager to make this pattern.  I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning lately, and going through my spring/summer clothes, I realized I really need some more warm-weather dresses, especially since I tend to avoid separates in warm months.  I've been sewing a lot of separates this winter, but I need to get into a warm-weather frame of mind and sew up some cotton dresses! 

(Joann had all their premium quilting cotton on sale last week, so I bought two that look like feedsack; hopefully I can decide on a pattern soon and perhaps squeak another dress into this challenge!)

This fabric reminded me of feedsack, and is 100%, but doesn't come out of the dryer wrinkled, which is nice for me (I hate to iron).  It did have a little bit of stretch to it, which I found odd, since there is absolutely no spandex in the fabric.  This proved challenging on the facing pieces, since the edges were prone to stretch out of shape while pressing and sewing if I wasn't careful.

Some challenges with this pattern: I decided to use snaps on the mock bib instead of real button holes because I wanted easy access for nursing.  That part worked out fine, but there were two things I wish I had done at the beginning, namely, using a fusible interfacing on the inside facing pieces to stabilize the edges, and I wish I'd finished the edges before sewing them to the bodice as I could have fixed any stretched out parts more easily.  Also: the facing pieces are not really attached to the bib on the inside (it says to tack them, which I did, but the tacking doesn't really keep them from moving around), so I'm not sure what I'd do differently to fix that next time.  Also: some of my markings for the button holes and buttons didn't stick around through the sewing process (I used a chalk marker, which I won't do again--half the time it melted away in the fabric), so I had a hard time figuring out where to put the snaps to attach the bib.

I also had to cut the back skirt panel two sizes larger than the front.  I measured the pattern pieces carefully before cutting, because I was between sizes, and wanted a good fit, and I'm so glad I did this!  I can't figure out why the back would be so much smaller than the front, or maybe ol' junk in the trunk here just needs more room in the rear.  (ha!)  I used my green skirt to compare the pattern pieces to since it was a four gore skirt and I could line up the seams with the lines of the skirt.   The sleeves are darted on the top, which was fine, but that means you do the easing on the sides, which was a little fiddly in places.  I used this sleeve pattern on the vanilla blouse earlier this winter, so I was aware of that going in. (Incidentally, I've since cut the sleeves off that blouse to make it short-sleeve for summer--the voile was just too lightweight for winter wear)

I will say that I now have a pretty good fitting skirt with pockets that I may use for a block in future skirts/dresses.  I really like the way the bottom of this dress looks, and am scheming future iterations, including a color block version with a cotton print on top and a solid on the bottom.  Oh, the possibilities! 

I used a crazy long zipper (18" that in retrospect was too long.  I could have gotten away with 14", I think.  I ended up just leaving some of the basting stitches in and not opening up the zipper all the way down.  It was tricky to insert the zip on the side, but I prefer the look of it to having a slash down the back.  I also used a blue zip that was the color of the lighter blue flowers, and I think I probably should have gone with red, but I'm not going to worry about it now.  Make do and mend, right?

Let's talk hardware a minute, shall we?  I decided to make a self-belt, and needed a buckle for it.  I scoured etsy and came across this little gem of a belt buckle (vintage, 1930s) for under $15 with shipping, so I snapped it up quick.  I found the buttons from a different etsy seller, and crossed my fingers that the yellows would match, and indeed they did!  I had originally planned to do blue buttons and buckle from my stash (see first photo) but decided they would get lost in the print.

Love those little pops of yellow!

Easy nursing access--I ended up putting a small piece of fusible behind each snap on the bodice because the fabric is thinnish, and I didn't want to put a hole in the fabric by pulling on those snaps all the time.  As I said, in the future, I'll just interface the whole piece and I think that will work better.  I also remembered, looking at this picture that the instructions for attaching the back neck facing are out of order--they have you do it after you attach the front facings, and it just doesn't lie right if you do it as suggested.  I pulled out the shoulder seams and put them in with the shoulder seams (as it would seem to be done intuitively if you look at it while you are sewing) and it worked much better.

That beautiful belt buckle!  I like the central clasp, so that I could just pick a length for the belt and not worry about it coming loose all day.  I didn't have any proper belting, so I used some interfacing for straps instead.  It was okay, but belting would have been better.

And, voila!

Pocketses!

I love the way this dress fits and feels on--it is easy and comfortable, I can move about easily, just perfect.  I could stand to drop the bust darts down an inch or so, but otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the fit! 

I'm looking forward to giving this pattern another go soon!