Vogue 1174

I was hoping that this would be a cute little dress for Christmas day, but I'm feeling a little *blah* about it.

While I think strapless dresses look great, I'm not sure they are right for me right now. After reading most of the reviews of this pattern, where the sewers noted not being able to eat in their frocks, I modified the dress by adding straps and omitting the foundation and boning, which keeps this strapless version up. Being realistic, I am often carting around a two year old on my hip (not because she can't walk, but because I need to keep her out of trouble) and I really like to eat, so it seemed smart to simplify this dress a little.

Unfortunately, I'm not happy with the dress now that the modifications have been made. I added a bit more ease at the waist for comfort and eating, but this seems to have impacted how large the back of the skirt is. The pattern ease is confusing in itself, despite being strapless and needing to be tight to keep it up, it includes ease in the bust. That seems a little strange to me - I thought strapless dresses needed zero ease. Even though I used the finished garment size to determine which size to cut, I still needed to take this dress in.

Poorly fitted skirt back

The fabric is a Hokkoh quilting cotton that has been in my stash for a while. I thought this non-drapy fabric would work for this pattern, but I'm not sure. The flat fold piping is voile. The dress isn't hard to make, but it is a litttle time consuming to get the piping neat and even. I can be a little picky with these things and it bugs me that I didn't fix some small areas. I'm also not happy about the super bust flattening properties of this dress, which for someone like me, ain't so great.

Out of focus piping shot.

I wish this was an awesome frock, but it's not. Oh well, I still have a few more days to knock up a new dress.

Happy Sewing all!