Velvet Swing Dress
Compulsive cloth-buyer that I am, over a year ago when velvet dresses were popping up on Pinterest and Instagram and nine months pregnant I became obsessed with the idea of owning a velvet dress. Never mind that I lacked the svelte figure for most of those inspiring images or the time to sew one, I rushed to the fabric store and picked up a couple meters of a luscious nylon-acetate crushed black velvet (I also bought one meter of a matte white velvet, also nylon-acetate. They don’t seem to sell silk velvet at my fabric store, but it costs a pretty penny).
Anyway, over a year goes by and I remember my obsession with velvet. On a whim, I offered to sew my little sister a velvet dress, black fabric handy, and the project was born.
The dress came together rather quickly. My sister chose the inspiration pic below, a narrow swing style, zipper-less with flutter sleeves.
Out of laziness, I only drafted the top half of the dress pieces, using my bodice block with shoulder length taken from my sister’s measurements. I closed the shoulder darts, but given that this is a swing dress, I didn’t bother to recreate any darts.
For the sleeves, I took my sleeve block cutting in half with two additional cuts to create four pieces. In the picture above you can see my re-taped sleeve. With those pieces I laid them out on a new piece of paper, spreading out the sleeve pieces to create a sleeve with a nice drape. After drafting the sleeve on the right, I realized it was not quite as wide as I desired, and ended up angling the sleeve on the fold to cut out a larger sleeve. Still didn’t quite recreate the flutter of the inspiration pic, but it’s a reasonably cute sleeve in the final dress.
For once, I followed popular wisdom and sewed the shoulders seams, added sleeves, and then sewed the sides of the dress together, completing the raw edges of the shoulder seams first. For the sleeves, I desired a slightly puffed shoulder, so I first gathered the top of the sleeve (appropriately, I added length to the pattern with this in mind) at the shoulder before sewing to the garment.
For the neckline I used a facing, and hemming the dress and sleeve bottoms for the first time I tried the technique of stitching first before the raw edge, then ironing and folding over to create a neat hem on a curve. It worked beautifully. But next time I will aim to create a narrower hem.
Arrr! She’s a beauty!
Tiered Linen Dress
