Summer Swan Song Part 2: The Coral Linen Shift That Wanted to Become a Sheath

I wanted to make a simple summer shift dress from a beautiful pink and orange crossdyed linen that has been marinating in my stash for years. I chose a Vogue pattern and figured to have the dress made up in a day. (Filed under the Best Laid Plans category)

I figured the bias linen would just follow my curves and fit nicely, the way that many of my bias dresses do. But this linen had a mind of its own. It fit me like a potato sack. So I stitched darts in the front bodice and the back waist areas. Everything was going fine until one of the two back darts decided to act up. No matter how many times I sewed and re-sewed it, the top and bottom points of the dart pointed out away from my body, by about 1/4 inch. They looked like tiny dinosaur back spikes.

The bizarre thing was that the three other darts went in beautifully. In fact, the other back dart, identical in shape, looked just fine.

I followed Sandra Betzina's instructions and added small circles of silk organza at the dart points, but that did no good. Then I posted a topic on Stitcher's Guild asking for advice and tips on how to solve this problem. I got several good answers, but alas none of them worked.

I put the dress in Time Out while I did some sewing for my DD. Then one day I got the linen dress back out, took out the dart one more time, pressed the entire dress and put it back on my dressform to rest. A few hours later I restitched the back dart into place and it looked just fine! When I put the dress on myself, there were no little pointy-out ends on any of the darts. Yay!

So either the dress decided to behave itself after sitting in the Time Out corner or the dart removal followed by pressing and hanging righted whatever wonky thing was going on with the fabric in that particular area of the dress.

I could be wrong about this, but adding darts to this dress officially transformed it from a shift dress to a sheath. I think shift dresses are dartless and hang from the shoulders, and sheaths are darted and can sometimes hang from the shoulders.

The dress is lined with coral stretch silk charmeuse cut on the straight of grain, since it was a stretch woven.

When the dress was finished, it looked pretty blah. So I gussied it up with some pinked-edge self-fabric flowers secured with an iridescent pink/orange bead.

Dress Photos:

And here is a closeup of the crossdyed linen that I used:

Pattern Used:

Vogue 1180

Pattern photos:Line Drawing:

Materials:

Fabrics:

Dress: Pink/orange crossdyed linen from stash, pretreated by pressing, then washing and drying before pressing again.

Deep coral stretch silk charmeuse from stash
Pink/orange iridescent glass beads for the flower centers
Thread:

TIRES 100% silk thread (monofilament) in sewing machine

MaxiLock 100% polyester thread in serger

Machine Needles:

Size 80 Universal
Machines:

Janome 6600 computerized sewing machine

Elna Pro 905 DCX computerized serger

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

1. Added darts.
2. Eliminated the back diagonal seam, as it was perfectly straight and added no shaping whatsoever. I'm sort of puzzled as to why it is there, perhaps as a design detail or to allow the dress to be made from narrower fabric.
3. Added fabric flower embellishments. I just cut out strips of fabric with my pinking shears and gathered one long edge, shaping the flower as I gathered. I secured the flower in place with a matching glass beads.

Things I learned, or was reminded of in this project:

1. Don't put darts in a bias dress.
2. Don't use the "burrito method" (this link is to an excellent pictorial tutorial on the method by one of my favorite online sewists, The Sewing Lawyer) for stitching the armholes for a bias cut dress with narrow shoulder seams. It puts way too much stress on the bias to pull it through the narrow shoulder opening. I have used this method many times with sheaths. But I will never use it again with a bias sheath. Perhaps it was the cause of my dart insertion problem. Who knows.

Things I would do differently, were I to make this dress again:
Hmmm. That's a puzzler, because if I ever make this dress again, I would still want it shaped with darts. Unless, of course, the fabric's bias was more giving, as in some of my silk chiffon bias cut sundresses and skirts.

I have no plans to make it again, though.