Sunday 22 July 2012

The purple dress

After the trauma that was the "If It Can Go Wrong" dress, this one came together easily. Possibly the fact that I had plenty of both time and fabric helped!

I used New Look pattern 6000 again, but this time view C. I knew that I wanted some sort of contrast for the collar and cuffs, but I didn't want anything too pronounced. I considered some sort of overlay, but the solution was far more straightforward. The fabric I had bought was a lovely marrocaine crepe in a deep berry purple, with one side shiny and smooth and the other matt and textured. I simply used the fabric matt side out for the dress, and shiny side out for the collar and cuffs. Of course, using the same fabric meant that there were no issues with colour matching.

Matt dress with contast collar and cuffs

The pattern illustration showed the dress with buttons sewn on to collar and cuffs. Because the fabric was plain, and the lines of the dress quite simple, I decided to liven it up a bit by making hand-embellished buttons decorated with beading and embroidery. Unfortunately such details don't tend to launder well, so the solution was to make them removable.

The cuffs were easy. I made buttonholes on the front and back of the cuff, and cufflinks from self-cover buttons. These consisted of the embellished button at the front, and a slightly smaller button covered in plain fabric, matt side out, at the back. The two were fastened together with shirring elastic.

For the collar I made buttonholes at either end, and also in the dress itself, but not in the neck facing. This time the 'cufflink' was made from a large embellished button, and a flat, two-hole button at the back. This enables the fasten to lie smoothly on the dress, and the neck facing prevents the back button from rubbing against my skin.

Collar unfastened, showing the three buttonholes

I was so pleased with the buttons/cufflinks that I made a second set, this time plain. There is a picture of the dress with the plain buttons here.

Button 'cufflinks' - plain and embellished, double and flat

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