OOPS! Mis-adventures of a sweater dress

I (Major Moma) am not sewing along with PRP this week.  The theme is  up-cycling a men's button down shirt and it just did not interest me.   Plus, my husband was not willing to give up a shirt.  Thus, this was a sewing for me weekend.  Yea!  that is so much fun too. Except, things did not go entirely smooth on this project.


I have been really into sweater fabric lately and I ordered some fabric to go with a pattern in my burda magazine I bought.  I thought it would be perfect for pattern Chill Dress 11/2012 #136B.  But, when the fabric arrived, I noticed those dots I liked so much were not shading, but instead lace-like holes. OOPS #1 

So, I needed to make a slip to wear underneath.  I drafted a simple sheath dress with a low neckline and mini skirt so it will work with a variety of dresses.  Since I had to make a slip, I figured it should at least be versatile. 

But as I was trimming a seam allowance, I snipped into the dress it self! OOPS #2  I patched the hole.  Hey, no one is going to see it any way!

Finally, I was free to sew the dress I originally wanted to sew.  It was a super easy pattern!  The neckline was the most complicated part as it calls for bias tape to finish the inside.  It is done the same way as the zebra shirt (blogged about here).  The rest was super simple.... shoulder seams and side seams.  One caveat though.  If you want a more relaxed fit, go up a size from your usual.  I actually did not plan on this dress being so fitted.  Burda is usually pretty good about standard sizes, but they suprised me here.

I hand sewed the hems in order to have an invisible finish.

It looked so pretty on the hanger so I tried it on.  Well, I lined up the selvages, just like I was told in the pattern, but what I did not realize is that the stretch on this fabric goes the opposite of what is normal!   So, it stretches vertically; not horizontally.  So basically, the dress is hard to get on, and I do not have room to gain a single ounce.  OOPS #3

When I discovered the mess up, I assumed I must have just cut it wrong.  But I then double checked the fabric.  And the selvages really are parallel with the stretch.  So strange.

But, it is a pretty date-night dress and I guess I will keep it as motivation to not over eat.  So I guess the lesson here is be more careful when using fabric you are not familiar with.