Alabama Chanin - The Sequel

Okay, let's start out by just acknowledging the fact that this dress is super-wrinkled.  I swear it's not because I'm lazy.  Rather, it's just because I'm a poor planner and I ended up taking these pictures after wearing the dress all day at work.  Just squint your eyes until you can't see the wrinkles anymore.  There, problem solved.

Now on to the details!  This lovely white dress - that I finished on September 2nd, just in time for it to be a fashion faux pas - is yet another Alabama Chanin garment.  The pattern is the short fitted dress pattern from Alabama Studio Sewing and Design and when they say fitted they mean fitted.  I cut out a size small - the same size as the tank top that I had made (although this time I didn't grade out to a larger size at the hips) - but this garment came out much, much smaller.  In fact, after sewing it up (by hand!) I tried it on for size and found the stitches under a lot of pressure in the bust area (and I don't really have a  bust area, so if I have a problem you know it's pretty tight).  In the end, I went back and reinforced those stitches with smaller stitches which ended up helping a bit and then I felled all the seams (by hand!) and that ended up helping a lot.  Who knew?  All that felling actually serves a purpose!

The hand stitching of the dress actually went by pretty quickly and was enjoyable to do.  The felling of all the seams?  Well, that felt like a chore, probably because there was a lot more pressure to make the stitches nice and neat because they're so visible, but I really love the dimension that it gives to the dress and I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.  

As for the neckline and armholes, I used the cretin stitch to attach the binding once again.  The only real change that I made was to make the overlap of the binding on the neckline right behind the shoulder rather than in the back of the neckline.  The low back neckline is such a design feature that I didn't want a big old overlap right in the middle of it.

As for the fabric, I bought it from Organic Cotton Plus again and I'm incredibly happy with it.  In fact, it's taking all sorts of self-control not to place another order so that I can make an Alabama Chanin mid-length skirt for winter.  Right now self-control's winning.  We'll see how long that lasts.

Oh, and remember how I said that I wore it all day at work today?  Well, it turns out that this dress goes perfectly with the Ikat blazer that I made several months ago.  It's a handmade match made in heaven!