One-Hour Dress - SewStylish Spring 2010

a.k.a. the Good & Plenty shift dress.

Since I had this lovely fabric* from Kyle I decided to use it for the one-hour dress project available here on the Craft Stylish site. It is also available in the Spring 2010 issue of Sew Stylish.

Ha, this "one-hour" dress took me a week to sew and then a couple more weeks to post! But that's just me because this was incredibly easy to make.

Day 1: Made the pattern according to the directions

Day 2: Cut out the dress

Day 3: Sewed the neck and side seams

Day 4 & 5: This was unexpected but my sewing machine refused to sew this material, even with a ball point needle for medium-weight knits. As it turns out, it didn't want a specialty needle at all so I ended up hand stitching the neckline and arm holes because I didn't want them to stretch and ruffle.

Before sewing the pleats down I wore the dress to work with a makeshift belt just to see what I thought. After that successful run, I choose a more ordered arrangement for my shoulder pleats than the more free-formed approach in the magazine.

Close-ups of the finished shoulder pleats:

The final dress!

What I changed or "how to make your dress better":

I only added 10 extra inches to the draped side of the pattern instead of the 12" they suggested because I wanted my dress to be slimmer. That is a measurement you might want to play with also.

The pattern has you use 7" for the armhole measurement. I suggest you measure your own upper arm and add 1/2" to that measurement. Mine are bordering on too tight.Measure the width of your own shoulders, calculate the width of your desired neckline and substitute those numbers for theirs. Otherwise, the neck may be too small to go over your head or too wide to stay on your shoulders.



In this picture before the shoulder pleats, it reminded me of the Lanvin dress that Tilda Swinton** wore when she won her 2008 Oscar.

* And yes, Kyle I think it IS swimwear fabric, but I don't really care. It feels great (silky smooth) and I know it can survive a rainstorm!
** By the way, Swinton once responded on Charlie Rose that if someone offered her the part of David Bowie in a movie about him, she'd love to play the part...so, someone please get on that quick!