OAL Progress

Due to technical difficulties I've not managed to post for a while, which is annoying, but hardly the end of the world I'm sure you'll agree.  To cut a long story short the app I use on my iPad for blogging is unavailable and my laptop has a massive attitude problem and a work ethic to match.  On the odd occasions that Mr. Craptop is functioning in a civilised manner I'll try and knock out a few posts and schedule them, but until I figure something better out then I'll be popping in and out for a while.

On the plus side I have a massive backlog of projects to share (and photograph, ugh!) so I have plenty to chat about.  However, seeing as we are about a third of the way through this year's Outfit Along I figured that the best place to start was with a little update for that.

The kids have found my secret photo spot!

Firstly I am happy to say that phase 1 is complete and I am very happy with it indeed.  It's not been too long since I made my first Belladone dress so I don't have too much to say about this one.  I made a few little tweaks to the flat pattern before I made this one, namely moving the bust darts down a little and adding 0.5 cm to each side seam.  The fit is much better as a result and this dress is really comfortable.

The fabric is 100% cotton, which emphasises the stucture of the dress nicely.  I had intended that the print would go the other way up but I completely forgot to check which way it was running as I was cuttting out.  I like it this way too.  I've got quite a bit left, this dress is pretty economical fabric-wise, so maybe I'll make something else with the print the right way up.  I bias faced, rather than bound all of the openings, using a rather fetching pink and white floral tape.  I bought a 33m reel of this stuff recently so it will be meeting all of my unseen bias taping needs for at least the next few months I think!

The construction of this dress was much less painless than the first time around.  Having misunderstood some of the directions last time I was much clearer on what I was supposed to be doing.  That always helps I find!  I slightly changed up the order of construction, leaving the side seams til last in order to make sewing the zip in a bit less fiddly.  I'll definitely do it that way again in the future because it was far easier for me.  I had intended to use an invisible zip, I enjoy sewing them much more than centred ones but I suddenly realised that I didn't actually have a compatible invisible zipper foot for my new machine.  Ooopsies.  I've bought one now but I wasn't waiting for it to arrive to finish this dress so a centred zip it has.

So that's that.  My matching cardigan has been growing very slowly due to cabled rib in 4-ply (yaaaaawn) but now I'm past that bit it's starting to speed up.  I haven't taken a photo for a while though so I'll save that for another post.  Probably next month at the speed I'm posting....see you then!