"Georgian on my mind" dress

Surprise--my afternoon and evening got way less busy. I only have two students on Mondays, and one had already canceled. I still would have had to drive into town for the other, but then I got an email saying she needed to cancel too. So I guess I could go rock climbing after all....but my first thought was that means I might actually have time to sew something today, so I think I'll do that instead. Antisocial, but I need relaxation this week when I can get it! So now I actually had time to photograph and review this dress....

It still makes me think of Georgian-era France, thus the name. Though in this picture, it just looks like a flowery dress. (Even though it is, in fact, paisley and not really that flowery at all.)


I've decided I need to get back into the habit of posting on Pattern Review (and probably BurdaStyle, since I haven't updated there since the fall), so here's my review for the pattern: It's mostly as posted on PR, but I added a few extra comments in italics.

Pattern: Simplicity 2248

Pattern Rating:Recommend, with Modifications (is what I put on there-- I wouldn't say this is mediocre, but if I had a write-in vote, it would probably be more along the lines of "Proceed with Caution".)

Pattern Description: From the back of the envelope: Misses' dress with sleeve and back variations

Pattern Sizing: 12-20. I made the size 12.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Yes.

 
 Were the instructions easy to follow? Mostly, though I had some quibbles with it.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? Like: the lines of the dress, the pockets, the cutout in the back. (See? Cute cutout.) Dislike: The directions for how to make the pleats were kind of confusing. Also, they didn't have any mention of interfacing the buttonhole area, which could result in a mess for a more novice sewer.

Fabric Used: A cotton quilters' print from Joann's (that had probably been in my stash for a good 5 years. It was time.)

 Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: I took a chance on making the size 12 (my measurements are mostly closer to the size 14), and I'm glad I did. This dress would have been huge on me otherwise. I still had to take in the back some, at the top of the zipper and the button placement. I added a snap to where the back cutout yoke thing overlapped because of that. I also added some topstitching to the bodice around the seams--the top reminded me of a corset and I wanted to bring that out some. (Hopefully this picture shows a bit more of that corset look.) This also helped me to close off the top of the pleats, since I couldn't make any sense of the given directions for that.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? I probably won't sew it again, since I tend to not re-use dress patterns. (Especially ones with a very distinctive look to them, like this--they're harder to modify into something new.) It looks cute, but whether I'd recommend it would depend on a person's willingness to deviate from the directions a bit.

Conclusion: I do like the way it looks, and it was actually a great pattern style for the fabric, which had been sitting in my stash for awhile. So I'll call this one a win.


(Final note: The back doesn't really pull like that where the snap is--Donna and I seem to be different sizes here. So I need to do some tweaking to her measurements. But I did want to show what the button looks like. And I did want to say that the button addition was well-designed--I wasn't sure how easy that would be for dressing myself, since buttons behind your back sounds tough, but I can manage both the button and the snap here without any help. Always a good thing.)