Vogue 1316 in Scraps

My latest project has been percolating for a long time.  I bought Vogue 1316 a couple of years ago now, on Ebay, with the intention of using up scraps.  I paid a ridiculous amount of money, for me anyway, for this pattern and I just popped it into the stash and the project I had in mind got put on the back burner.

Fast forward to last week and my growing pile of fabric scraps and this pattern finally saw the light of day again.  I hadn't initially intended to make this from denim, in fact I think I had mentally said to myself no denim because I don't really wear dresses at home except when the weather is really hot and denim is not conducive to hot weather wearing.  So here I was, making a dress which may or may not be suitable for work in denim that is most certainly not suitable for summer; sounds like an awesome plan, right!  Despite all my reservations, this plan did make a huge dent in my fabric scraps bin because these pieces were bulky.

All of the pieces I had chosen were 30cm long or less.  Some were stretch some were not and they were of varying weights.  Most were denim but one piece was uncut cord, a velvety type fabric.  

My next challenge was to grade the pattern up one size in the lower half.  This should have been rather simple, except that I was grading one size bigger than the pattern went to and there is no real side seam in the skirt in some of the pieces.  There are strips that run front to back and join at the centre back panel.   Since I was making this dress from scraps, I really had nothing to lose by just following the grading as drafted and hoping it worked and also hoping that the slight stretch in some of the fabrics made the project a little more forgiving. 

With my pattern now ready for cutting out, I began assembling my various fabric pieces.  I chose fabrics that I thought looked somewhat complementary and hoped that I had enough of each fabric.  I then laid out the pieces aiming for a semblance of symmetry.  I wanted the lighter shades to be in the middle of the dress and darker shades to be the outer because I felt this is the most flattering generally for the wearer.  I also wanted to frame the dress in black.  I chose black also for the centre back panel partly out of necessity because this was the longest piece of fabric and partly because this had been done on one of Vogue's illustrations.  All of the pieces were cut on grain as per the instructions but, I did have to cut some pieces across the grain.

As luck would have it, I also had some navy lining in my stash that had been picked up at some point at an op shop and I even found a rescue zip in my bag of zips that was the perfect length and black to match the back panel.

You know when you have a project that seems to just go so smoothly that it can't last?  This was one of those projects.  I actually didn't come unstuck until the last hurdle.  I found that my lining didn't fit my dress.  It was too narrow across the chest.  After pondering the situation overnight I decided to hand stitch a little extension to the lining at the armholes.  This isn't perhaps the most professional solution and on the inside definitely not the tidiest but it does work and really, how much time am I going to spend looking at the lining anyway!  I think the reason it didn't fit was because my blue velvet/uncut cord fabric has quite a bit of stretch and this has somehow grown the bodice a bit.

As is often the case, when I make scrap projects, I am loving this dress.  It is probably because these projects tend to have a huge amount of time invested in them just to make them work.  I should really learn from that and invest more time in the planning in my more valuable projects.  As a happy coincidence, this dress goes really nicely with my new Sapporo Coat.  To think I had my doubts that navy and black went together!