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Burda Dress #121 with Marbled ITY Stretch Fabric

New week new dress?

That's kinda what's been happening lately! I've just been having fun cutting out sewing patterns and making them up. I mean, why not?!

The latest dress I finished was Burda's Fitted Sheath Dress #121 from June 2015. I have (no joke) had this dress design printed up and posted on my bulletin board for almost a year now and I finally made it!


 I've been working far more with stretch knits lately and this was a perfect pattern to keep up on my skills with. It was simple, easy, and super-quick to sew up!

What I love about this dress is that the fabric I chose was a horizontal print and with the way the pattern bends in shape to accommodate the rouching, the print essentially becomes vertical up at the bodice portion. So cool! The fabric is an ITY stretch knit from fabric.com. It was very easy to cut and work with! I will definitely look out for more ITY stretches in the future.

I have a little over a yard of this left and I definitely need some new tops. I might make some more of the same top from the New Look pattern I used a while ago for my Viewmaster top for leftover fabric!

 

Something new for me to sew up in any pattern was a gusset. This is less so the kind of gusset I am used to seeing in pattern making books and feels more like a styleline. Either way, I unnecessarily confused myself with it somehow until I walked my pattern along. I think the notches/seam allowance threw me off while sewing (maybe I was tired?) but I felt like such a dummy after walking my pattern and seeing exactly what I wasn't doing right.


 
Pattern flat sketches.

 

See the gusset?! They really are a nice touch to an otherwise very simple dress. 
 

 The shoulders also do a nice accidental almost-chevron too! 


I didn't make a muslin on this one -- totally just wung it. I cut a size 34 (I could have been ok with a 36 too) and the only edits I made were making the neckline higher, taking about 4" off the bottom hem, and instead if "making a backing strip", I used the clear elastic I used for my stripe rouch top from earlier this year to get the gathers to stay put. 

Weirdly enough, I sewed this dress primarily on my sewing machine after fiddling with my settings and testing on scrap pieces of fabric. I do own and use a serger, but I used the serger here to finish off the edges and then sewed the rest on my machine because.... why not?!

I used a zigzag stretch stitch to keep the fabric stretchy and then did a faux cover stitch with a double-needle on the sleeve and bottom hems. I think how to sew stretch knits on your machine will be my next blog post on The Art Shake so you can see in-depth the process I have been using come September! 


This will be a fun one to wear! 


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