mccall's 6069

this was a project i planned for myself back in april. i just finished this dress in time for my birthday dinner last night (ooops!). it's a knit dress so plenty of stretch for good food!

front

back

fabric: $6.00 ($3.00/yd x 2 yds)
thread: $2.00 (gutermann polyester which i found to be better than coats & clark)
elastic: $2.00 (3/8")
total: $10.00

i love this dress! it's incredibly comfortable. it was my first time sewing knits, and due to the fabric's thickness, i was able to do so without much difficulty. i used muslin underlining instead of interfacing and left off the pockets. i didn't do any seam finishes because i was in a rush to get it done before dinner time haha. i'll probably just do some overcast stitches since knits don't unravel. all in all, a very comfortable summer dress!

p.s. reviewed here.

suggestions please

looking through my (very) small stash of self-made clothing, i realized that i'm lacking anything fitted. i really need suggestions on what to make next that's:

1. fitted
2. easy
3. preferably does not require knits or silks... (they're intimidating ; ;)
4. a top or a dress
5. from simplicity, mccalls, butterick, vogue, or burda (retail patterns not those sold online).

i'm considering the following, in order of arbitrarily assigned difficulty:

this is rated "average" and my skill level is "very easy." 

(i love this simplicity dress sfm but i am so intimidated by all the darts and pleats and shirring oh my!)

ideas?

new project - McCall's 8581

working on a eightiestastic new dress with tucks!

this dress requires 3 yards of material (44") which was kind of meh because the dkny dress barely used 2. this dress is wider and longer - it has 3 x 1" tucks which is really 2 inches per tuck so that's... 6 inches of decorative material. still, it looked super long. not sure how much i can shorten the hem without having to move up the bottom tucks (there are two). it might have to resort to the latter. 

anyhow, as you may or may not know, cutting fabric is my least favorite part of sewing. I ABSOLUTELY HATE(d) it! yesterday i thought i'd go a different route and went to ace hardware and got a box of its biggest and heaviest washers. i had read on different blogs that using washers as pattern weights are much easier & faster than pinning down patterns. yes i hate pinning patterns to fabrics as well. i have these perfectionist tendencies when i do detailed work like this, and can get really discouraged if the fabric isn't cut zomg exactly like the pattern. i think the dkny dress took me 2 or 3 evenings to pin down, cut and mark. YEAH I KNOW! a huge waste of time!

aside from the weights, i also decided to try out rotary cutter instead of scissors. i don't know how many times i've read "tips on cutting" from different sewing books, and the only suggestion they have is "cut as closely to the cutting surface as possible." dude, whatever! as soon as you slide the scissors underneath the fabric, you've moved it. so, i got a new rotary blade and got to work. prior to this change in my cutting habits, i've only used my rotary cutter against a metal ruler on straight cuts. why didn't i think that R-O-T-A-R-Y means that you can use it on curves? i'll never know. 

so, how long did it take for me to cut out 4 pieces and mark them with this new cutting method? oh about an hour. that's crazy efficiency from what i am used to. 

so, to stress, in order to de-stress cutting: 

pattern weights (washers) x 10ish
+
rotary cutter
=
no more hair pulling!

(this is probably not news to seasoned seamstresses, but pretty phenomenal for me.)

eta: i only tried this on 100% cotton. not sure if knits/rayon/silk/satin will produce the same results.