A Day at University

No, I'm not a student anymore, but I was attending some presentations at university last monday. I wasn't sure about the dress code, and a pair of jeans or a flower printed summer dress didn't feel right. And all my more "official" or "business like" dresses are made from wool, which is not so good to wear on a warm summer day, so it was clear I had to make one, very quickly because I had only a few days of time.

I thought that a shift dress could never be wrong for such an occasion, so I used a pattern from Burdastyle magazine which have always liked but never made (it is 5/2008, No. 125).

I bought the fabric and copied the pattern on thursday, made and fitted the muslin on friday, cut the fabric on saturday and did the sewing on sunday, and monday by 1am I was finished, with the hem and everything. I know that for a lot of you this is not fast speed sewing, but for me it is, I am a slow seamstress and felt like going crazy with speed this time (Maybe I should also mention that I had to work this weekend, so the weekend sewing as well had to take place only in the late afternoon/evening.)

I was lucky to find the fabric I was dreaming of for this dress: a dark blue silk, but in a sturdy weave, almost like cotton, with some irregular thicker threads in it. It looks more elegant that cotton, but it's not glossy, and it feels fantastic on the skin!

I didn't line the dress, because I don't like lining on my skin in summer so much, especially since the fabric feels so great. Instead, I drafted front and back facings for the neckline and armholes.

The problem was, the fabric was only the rest of the bolt, cut in two pieces, with 140 cm total, whereas the pattern instructions called for 170 cm, and in one piece!
I solved this by adding a waist seam to the back and with cutting the bodice parts on the crossgrain, otherwise it wouldn't have been possible. Luckily, my fabric was a few centimeters wider than the one in the instructions. At the end, there were only a few small fabric scraps left.

I used a center back lapped zipper instead of an in-seam zipper. I like lapped zippers so much and also hoped it would make the back view less boring.

I'm really happy with how the dress turned out! I was wearing it with a pink cardi, and I felt very appropriately dressed in it! (I'm even thinking about making a second one from this pattern in a printed cotton as a summer dress, but am not sure if a printed cotton would work with the pattern.)