I finally finished Vogue 8644. You may remember that this has been a chapter of accidents, all my own fault on account of having washed the original fabric, so this is a second attempt.
The result’s a resounding ‘meh’. There’s nothing dramatically wrong but I’m just not that keen on it. I haven’t got the fit quite right on the bust. The colour’s not good on me. I don’t like the neckline. It needs a belt, or a necklace, or something, but I don’t know what.
The bust fit issue surprised me, as I measured quite carefully and tissue-fitted the pattern, but the dress needs lifting up on the front shoulder seam by as much as an inch. Why no, I didn’t fit as I went. I am astoundingly lazy, have made a few Vogue dress patterns that fit OK, and so thought the tissue fitting would be enough. On the upside, the fit on the back is better than I normally manage – I did a rounded back adjustment for the first time – so I learnt something useful there.
The colour…well until I put lipstick on you wouldn’t have seen me if I stood against a white wall in this dress. I normally stick to dark colours but having recently discovered I can wear white I thought I’d give this a go. Nah. Lesson learnt. Ice cream colours definitely to be avoided in future, even mint choc chip.
The neckline feels wrong. I like my necklines high but am forever being told they ‘look uncomfortable’ so I didn’t raise this one. It may look comfortable but it doesn’t feel right! That might grow on me in time I suppose.
On the up side it does have pockets
although they aren’t really big enough for a screwdriver, a bunch of keys, a pager, and all the other junk I often carry around at work.
The good news is that there was no way I was going to hand hem this after having seen it on me, so I gave my machine’s blind hem function another go. I have had very little success with it up to now unless I’ve been hemming onto an underlining, but this time I got it adjusted correctly! It shows a little but no worse than my hand sewn hems. So I am proud to announce that this dress has no hand sewing in it at all, something I have been aiming for since I started dressmaking. Also having a dress form made measuring the hem length really easy, so that’s another gadget I can recommend.
That’s probably the last summer dress for this year. I am now going try drafting a Vivienne Westwood skirt knockoff which I’m pretty excited about. And yes, I am going to make a muslin this time.
Catherine Daze's Blog 
Hi Catherine
Have you considered just carefully taking in those vertical darts, tapering in very very gradually from the bottom? I needed to adjust two of my dresses after they were finished. I just popped the dress on inside-out, lifted the bodice lining (I admit I don’t know how yours is lined) and pinned the main fabric where I needed to take out the fullness under the bust. It did work.
As for the colour, I don’t think it looks bad on you. You’re probably just not used to wearing it, that’s all. I can see you have pale skin, but it does still look okay. But maybe without the lipstick it would be more of a “problem”. As you say, perhaps an accessory of some sort would help you feel more comfortable with the dress.