I've been wanting to move my blog away from Blogspot for a while but could never be bothered to actually do it. This week was the tipping point though, and I've now fully migrated over to https://patsypoomakes.wordpress.com/ . The blogspot address will remain here but all new posts will only appear at https://patsypoomakes.wordpress.com/ . There are lots of reasons for the move but my biggest one is how hard Blogger has made it for people to subscribe to receive new posts via email. It's such a basic requirement but apparently, they think it's too much to offer. I'm basing this purely on how I myself prefer to consume this stuff. I can't be arsed with feed readers anymore and emails are easy and convenient. When I receive one, if I fancy reading it, I will click through to it and, if not, I'll just delete it. Another reason is the spat between Google (owners of Blogger) and Instagram/Facebook/Meta. I don't even know if this is still the case anymore ...
I am slightly ashamed to admit that this dress has been finished, except for its hem, for over a year... I thought it was going to be much more time consuming than it ended up being so I kept putting it off for ever.
In my defence, the hem really stretched down in places and until the start of this year I didn't have a dress form to help me even it out.
But here it is, in all its glory, the Doris dress!
It's a very feminine dress, with the big floaty skirt, grown on sleeves and back waist tie. It was very straightforward to make as well.
The bodice has a button front which I chose to make non-functional. There's a side zip and the neck opening is large enough that I didn't see the point in going through the buttonhole making process. It can sometimes be a painful one... :)
I cut a size 10, which is my normal Sew Over It size and I didn't make any changes. I like the fit but I might try the size 8 next time, just to have slightly less room on top. Then again, it is super comfortable to wear so I might just live with it.
The skirt construction gave me a little bit of a headache. It is constructed by sewing together lots of different panels, which gives the skirt such a lovely shape. And although it was a long time ago, I remember having a hard time matching the panels I had in front of me with the ones on the instructions. It could just be that I didn't label them properly after cutting out, but I'll be keeping that in mind for my next one.
The fabric was a very, very cheap viscose I got from Minerva Crafts. I think it was only 3 quid a metre and it was almost too fluid for this dress. As you can see on the photo below, the weight of the fabric makes the facing turn to the outside. I had to topstitch the neckline to help with that but it's still happening. It's way better than it was before though.
As I mentioned at the top of the post, the hemming put me off finishing this dress for a long time. Because of the way the panels are cut and the viscose being as fluid as it is, my hem was ALL. OVER. THE PLACE!
Seriously, there were sections I had nothing to cut and there were others where I had to cut over 3 inches to even it out. I'd never had that happen to me and until I got my dress form it would've been a pretty impossible job.
I'm glad I finally got my act together and did it though. I like the finished product a lot. And the hem is so very even!!!
But my favourite thing about it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the swish power. Just take a look at that!
