Drunk-sew much?

No, actually, I do not.  Despite evidence to the contrary.

The following pictures are of the rayon Bemberg / Ambiance lining for my current project.  Not a friendly fabric, I tell you what. Made quite a few mistakes and learned some lessons that I'm sharing here:

1) Do not scrunch, wring, or stomp on the fabric to get the water out, and leave it to air dry.  NO.  It results in what seems to be PERMANENT wrinkles.  Wash-and-dry in delicate cycle, or just dry-clean it.

2) Rayon Bemberg is slippery as hell!  It is difficult to sew straight!  Look at this hella crooked topstitching job!  Try "taut sewing" where you pull the fabric from the front and back of the feet.  Of course, cut the pieces on-grain in the first place!

 

3) Getting a nice pinking is even harder with slippery fabric!  Look at this one!  It looks like it's been gnawed by a mouse!  I don't have a "lesson learned" on this issue, other than "don't pink it!"

4) Use a sharp, small needle!  Otherwise you get stripe-y pulls across the grain like the above.

5) Nobody other than you needs to see the lining.  So if you have a bad lining, do not show it to the world like what I just did! 

Bitching aside, I'm looking for ideas for alternate lining fabrics that are more user-friendly.  Some folks prefer poly, others mention silk.  What's your preference, and why?

Purple knit dress

Good thing I used the cheap polyester knit for this one. 

As predicted, I did some wrong math on the pattern drafting effort.  The armholes ended up very tight.  The book says to up the armsyce by .75 inches, so I did my usual .5, which in retrospect wasn't necessary (might actually need to lower it instead).  Also, the pattern calls for a straight silhouette, but I cut mine on the curvy side.  So the resulting drape looks a bit funny.

Construction-wise, it's a mixed result.  I didn't have any idea how to attach the roll collar, so it was pure improvisation, full of turning inside out and stretching here and there.  At one point I actually heard "rrrip!"  Thankfully I saw no sign of broken stitches, just a very stretched collar.

I used French seams for the sides.  It's my first time using French seam and I love the finished look, so I think I'll be using it a lot from now on.

Some pictures:

Full length (the stripe effect is from the window blinds):

I lightened up the picture a bit so the draping would show better:

I think I will make this dress again in the future, with a straighter silhouette, corrected armsyce, better construction know-how for the roll collar, and of course, nicer fabric, because apparently polyester melts when pressed.

Spring colorblock dress in the middle of winter

For once, I'm ahead of the game! Well, really I'm very late, since this dress started in - wow-has-it-been-that-long - three months ago.

Without further ado:

A close-up of the mock buckle, inspired by a J. Crew dress, and also to cover up the seam because I didn't cut the band on fold:

Here's me modeling it:

The end of the zipper is usually a struggle. As you can see here, it's all wonky. (Anybody have any tips on how to solve this? I use the regular zipper foot to connect the back seam and the zipper-end, and it usually ends up bunchy.)
Also, the sloper calls for a back shoulder dart, which I did not transfer to the pattern, thinking it wouldn't make a difference. Apparently it does: the back neck band is too big and now it gaps away from the body. Lesson learned.

The dress itself is fully lined in self fabric. I pretty much winged the construction part of it, with the help of my new best friend, the seam ripper. It's not completely finished yet, actually. Hemming needs to be done (still can't figure out how to use blind-stitch foot and am dreading hand-sewing), and hook-and-eye fastener needs to be attached.

Generally it fits a little loose on me now, because I've shrunken a bit because of a little diet and exercise. It's good news, actually. I feel physically better, am sleeping better (didn't really need help on that department), and theoretically should be looking better in clothes because the boobs are now correctly positioned "above" and not "at" the waist. Although, it also means I have to draft a new sloper.

This dress has better be worth it...

... because it is taking longer than I expected. It should have been done this weekend. Evidently not.

Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly of this week's progress:

The Good: Connie Long / Threads quick-lining tutorial worked. (Of course it would... otherwise they wouldn't put it on a book.)

The Bad: This is related to the sleeve/armhole pleats. In the construction, the pleats are to be sandwiched between the right-sides when the armholes are sewn. Naturally, I forgot to do it. So I re-did it. Except now the pleats were backward! Crap! After the second re-do, they came out exactly as intended:

The Ugly: I think this is worse than the pleats incident because I should have known better from previous experience, and fixing it means completely ripping one side and re-doing it because the shoulder/neck/armhole seams have been sewn:

Twisted zipper!

I decided this was a good time to take a break.

See anything funny here?

Yup. Didn't do @#$%& hem allowance!!

After a few minutes of "serenity now" chant, I realized that the hem will have pleats on it, which will extend it down by another inch.

So far, here's what I've completed.

• Cut fabric and lining
• Sew all darts
• Attach lining to facing
  
• Attach skirt pieces to bodice pieces
• Made sleeve pleats
  

And I ended up with pointy darts:

@#$%& again!

The point is more apparent on the horizontal dart than the vertical one. It's not terribly obvious, but the fact that it's there just bugs me. I might fix it by shortening the dart and sewing it on a curve like this tutorial on BurdaStyle. Or not. Would the lining help fill out the dart?

The pleats turned out slightly shorter than the intended 10 inches, which is fine, except that one is shorter than the other:

Serenity now!!

Okay, moving on. The next step is to attach the lining to the dress, following this tutorial from Threads magazine (adapted from Connie Long's book Easy Guide to Sewing Linings, which I have). Using this method, supposedly you won't need to hand-sew to complete the attachment. Can't really wrap my mind around the turning-inside-out part though. I guess I'll just try and see how it goes.