Sewing: V1530 - Dress for Spring and Summer

This is Vogue Patterns V1530. I love this dress with all its subtle detalils, although it took a bit of fussing to get the fit right. First off, I love the fabric, which are two different colors of this stretch cotton/linen chambray that I got from denverfabrics.com This is the yellow/pink color and this is the olive/black color. I'd buy more of this stuff if they had other colors available. I bought them on a whim because I'm always on the lookout for a good cotton/linen blend. They turned out to be great fabrics with a soft hand, great texture and weight, with the perfect amount of stretch for a woven. Also, the two colors looked great together. Winning!

I made quite a bit of small adjustments for the fit. I'm not including the photo here, but I did make the blouse version version to get an idea of the fit. The pattern says it is loose-fitting, which was fine for the blouse, but too loose for a stretch woven dress. I added these slanted front darts, some back darts, and took in the back seam a bit. I knew the slanted side seams would be difficult to adjust when completed with the trim so I sewed them with a basting stitch and tried on just the dress body without the yoke to check the fit and then re-sewed with the trim. It turns out I didn't need to adjust those seams because the darts were good enough.I trimmed away about 3/4" from the capped sleeves because they covered too much of my upper arms and seemed too large.

The details that I love most are the front hole, the slanted side seams, and the cross-over back yoke pieces. The upper yoke back required more adjustment that I thought it would. Having two back yoke pieces made it easier to fit after I narrowed the back seam a bit, but I still couldn't get as perfect and smooth a fit as I would have liked.

Here's a photo of the inside of the top front section. The pattern instruction for making the hole was far to complicated for me. What I did was wait until the yoke was complete and then sewed the hole with a piece of facing on the outside front. I then cut the hole and turned the facing to the inside. I machine edge-stitched the hole instead of the hand stitching method in the pattern. Also, you can see that I used a wide facing piece for the top of the dress body instead of a half-lining. My fabric is thick enough not to require lining, and it's hard to find a suitable stretchy lining. A lot of folks use tricot lining but I've never liked it's slimy texture and it never feels good against the skin in hot weather. And one final note -- I just sewed my side seam bands in place and did not use any of the fusing techniques in the pattern.

Kakasu Shawl

This is the Kakasu Shawl pattern. I'm not a big fan of shawl knitting, since I don't really like to wear them. However, this one is more of a capelet style which I think I can deal with. Also, I bought some Rowan kidsilk haze yarn on sale at 50% off and I've always wanted to knit some kind of project using kidsilk haze. It's a pain to knit with, but I sort of got used to it. I tried about 4 different types of needles before finding a circular one that I liked with just the right amount of smoothness in the wood along with a smooth join to the cord. It still took longer to knit than other garments with the same amount of yarn.

My version has a different look and feel from the pattern's version. My yarn gives it a much more ethereal look and I don't have stripes to show off the wedges. Since I don't have stripes, I added some eyelets at the last row of each wedge to show off the shape. At the bottom edge, I slipped the first stitch on every row to give it a smoother finish. At the neckline, I added a neckband in garter stitch that is folded over to the inside for a double thickness. You can't see them in the photos, but I also added a few beads to the neckband. Finally, I added 8 rows of garter stitch at the start and finish to form borders for the front edges.

Here's a photo of the shawl laying flat. It's not a full circle, but it's close.

I'm quite happy with the finished product. It's remarkably warm and I think I can wear this as a cover-up with dressier clothing.