I finished a thing!

Normally I wouldn't get this excited about finishing a dress, but these are not normal times. I was chatting to my friend F the other night* and we both agreed that our concentration levels are hopelessly low at present. So I'm taking the completion of any task, no matter how basic, as a win.

Woohoo - a finished dress!

This is my second dress made from Vogue 2787. I decided that I wanted to finish it before I started my April projects, as it has been on a hanger on the door of my workroom for ages. I thought it had been there since last year, but actually I started it in August 2018!

The pattern

Its previous appearance on the blog

After I made the front I sewed the centre back, shoulder and side seams, and that was as far as it got. Amazingly, I hadn't lost the facing pieces in the intervening 18 months, so the next thing was to sew those together and attach the facing.

With side seams, and pinned-on facing

After that, all that was needed was the zip (hand-picked, as ever), the sleeve and skirt hems, making and attaching the shoulder pads, and the buttons at the back neck. Far and away the trickiest thing was selecting the buttons. Buttons of any yellow apart from an exact match - which of course I didn't have - looked dreadful, so I experimented with picking out the other colours in the fabric.

Possible button choices

In the end, I settled on the vintage red set on the left.

The buttons in situ - with matching earrings

The soft cotton that I used this time is a far more appropriate fabric choice for this pattern than the crisper cotton I used previously; the gathered sections drape much better.

Showing the gathered sections at the neck and hip.

Sadly, because this was finishing off a dress already cut out, there's no impact on the Stashometer. However, the shoulder pads were covered with lining fabric taken from my 'lining offcuts' stash, and the seams beneath the armholes (the weakest point of this dress) were reinforced with tape from my 'leftover bits of tape and binding' box. Even though I'm a firm believer in wasting as little as possible, sometimes in the past it has seemed a bit daft to keep all these odds and ends when I live so close to a fabric shop and can 'just pop out' for anything I need. Suddenly however it doesn't seem so silly any more!

Home-made covered shoulder pad

Tape to stop the side seam from tearing below the armhole

I'm really pleased with how this dress turned out, and so glad that I finally finished it. I'm looking forward to it getting lots of wear when I can get out and about, and might even manage to get some pictures of it somewhere other than in front of a yellow wall!

Blending in

* - Not in person, obviously. When we stopped to think about it, we realised that our socialising mostly consists of me going round to her house for a good natter and a couple of glasses of wine followed by copious cups of tea - all of which we could easily replicate over the phone. Sadly what I can't do is play with her cat; but he does recognise my voice over the phone, and miaows a greeting to me!

Missing this handsome chap!