Easter Dress

I'm calling this my Easter dress, because hey, that's as good an excuse as any to make a dress. Although I made less for wearing to church and more for wearing around casually. I finished it last night and pressed Brandon into service as my photographer.

I got three yards of the butterfly fabric on impulse. That was all there was left. The pattern, it turned out, called for more, because the skirt is meant to be on the bias. I laid it out and had just enough to cut it on the straight grain(and absolutely no margin for error. The pockets are in red because I didn't have enough of the butterfly print for pockets.) As you can see, it didn't noticeably affect much.

The dress went together well, and I used a new zipper technique (out of Sew What! Skirts). You baste the zipper seam together and then use fabric glue to tack the zipper down to the wrong side of the fabric, centered over the seam. Then you stitch neatly (in theory at least) 1/4" on each side of the zipper seam on the right side of the fabric to fasten the zipper down, and rip out the basting stitches. And voila! There you have it, the easiest zipper installation method I've tried, even if it doesn't look any better than any other zipper I've done.

I used the new rolled hem foot to hem it, and while it looks okay from a distance in the picture, in real life I need to go back and redo some parts. I have pretty much mastered the rolled hem foot for straight hems, but the slight curve of this hem kept throwing me off.

I really like how this dress turned out. The bodice isn't really my favorite, but the shape of the skirt is very nice. I can't wait for some actual warm weather to wear it in. Right now it is blustery and cold out, although the sun is shining, deceitfully making it look warm.