Vogue 9253 in Cotton/Linen

When I was in Mood Fabrics, I spent a ridiculous amount of time agonizing over which piece of linen I should buy to make Vogue 9253.  To help combat my fabric binge tendencies, I have vowed not to hoard any fabric.  That is currently a winning strategy but does little to address the size of the stash I already have.  Instead of wandering through the rows and rows of fabric, dumbstruck like a rabbit in the head lights, I shopped with a plan.   For any Kiwis or Aussies that haven't visited Mood Fabrics in New York, think Spotlight on steroids.  This place is massive!  It is relatively well laid out given the amount of stock, but like Spotlight you have to dig through piles of rolls of fabric to ferret out the gems and this store covers two or three floors so you really need to plan your shopping experience.  On the day I went it was raining and I was wearing a jacket.  I don't think they air condition that building because by the time I had walked up and down those steps and lugged those rolls around I had broken out in a shopping induced sweat.  Any ho, this is the second of those fabrics to be made up.  The first is currently sitting in the naughty corner but more on that in another post!



















Back at home, I think I had read every post on the Internet about Vogue 9253 and the thing that always came through was the depth of that neckline and the best way to raise it!  My solution was to redraft that v neck, not to overlap or stitch it up which seemed to be the most common solutions.  I redrew the bodice pattern on a piece of paper and then squared up from the waistline which isn't at the waist at all really, but under the bust, creating a centre front seam of around 15cm.  I then redrew the neckline finishing at the original shoulder.  To test the fit of the new bodice front, I made a bodice muslin.

This dress is a huge fabric hog and even though I had bought 2.5 yards of this linen/cotton, I still struggled to fit the pieces on my fabric.  Fortunately in this instance, I am short, because I was able to remove a lot of length from the skirt.  I also found by shortening the sleeves, I could save quite a bit of fabric waste.  I really like the new sleeve length so this was a great solution.

I really love this dress, and all the planning was certainly worth it.  I will definitely make another one of these in the future.