Lemongrass Yellow-Trimmed Grey Sheath and Shrug

Inspiration for the dress: A Crimes and Misdemeanors design seen in a Nordstrom ad in Harper's Bazaar magazine:

Dress and Shrug-style Jacket Photos:

Patterns used:

Dress: McCalls 9295

Shrug style jacket from pattern #101, Burda World of Fashion December 2008:


Materials:

Grey RPL (rayon, polyester, lycra) medium weight knit from House of Fabrics, North Asheville, North Carolina

Lemongrass yellow ultrasuede from stash

Mettler 100% polyester thread

MaxiLock serger thread



Things I did with this project (that weren't in the pattern instructions):

1. Pretreated the RPL knit by heavily steaming with a gravity feed iron.
   
   
2. Self-faced the dress bodice area, front and back, to the high waist.
   
   
3. Reinforced the horizontal bodice seam in this stretch strapless dress by basting clear elastic by machine, using a small zig-zag stitch just inside the seamline. The teflon presser foot was used for this step.. Then attached the bodice facing with the same small zig zag stitch and trimmed the seams to 1/8 inch with a three thread serger stitch.
   
   
4. All seams on the dress (except the horizontal bodice seam) were sewn with a 3 thread serger stitch.
   
   
5. Added ultrasuede straps, upper bodice trim, and hem trim. Adhered the ultrasuede to the garment with two strips of 1/4 inch Steam a Seam Lite at each long edge and then topstitched it into place using the teflon presser foot.
   
   
6. All seams on the bolero jacket were sewn conventionally with 5/8 inch seam allowances. The seams were sewn with a very slight zig zag stitch, and the the seam allowance edges serged just to look nice, since the knit does not ravel.
   
   
7. Reinforced the shoulder area only of the jacket with clear elastic.
   
   
8. Except for the facings, the dress and jacket are unlined. The dress has no zipper or closure. It just slips on.
   
   

Things I learned (or was reminded of) in this project:

1. Ultrasuede has slightly more stretch on the crosswise grain than it does on the bias. The only reason to cut it on the bias for trim is if a longer length of trim is needed than the crosswise width provides.
   
   
2. It's possible to almost (but not quite) invisibly hem this RPL knit by hand by using a very small (size 10) needle and picking only one or two threads per hemstitch from the body of the garment. The stitches may not show; however a very faint ridge may mark the edge of the facing through the right side of this knit, even though it is of moderate thickness.
   
   
3. Removing a spot on the RPL knit by rubbing it with a cloth and clear water raises a bit of a nap. The rubbed area will be obvious. I don't know whether this would have happened had I prewashed the RPL. Since I plan on dry cleaning the garment, I did not prewash, just pretreated with steam. Fortunately it happened before I cut out the garment, so I just avoided the spot when placing the pattern pieces.

Things I would do differently were I to repeat this project:

1. Prewash the RPL in the washer and dry on low even if the garment is to be dry cleaned thoroughout its lifetime.
   
   
2. Attempt to cut the strap as one L-shaped piece for the front and one for the back, (two pieces per side), seaming at the shoulders and sides, instead of using the 1 1/2 inch wide straps, seamed at the front and back bodice.