Completed New Look 6144

You may remember that I made this pattern up about a year ago and the whole construction was riddled with errors as well as a considerable amount of head fuck. All in all this dress took me around 3 weeks to complete.

New Look 6144

So I thought that with another years worth of sewing experience under my belt I would try again!

I had to rake through my previous posts to determine what size I made the last time however they didn't really allude to much. Matching the old pieces against the pattern tissue, I had cut a 12. This time I cut a 14 and removed 1.5 cm of length from the waist and 1 inch from the hem and here's the results.

The fabric I used was a really nice Herringbone 59 inch poly cotton which I picked up from Mandors for £5.99 / m. the pattern suggested 1.6 m but I read the yard requirements like a dufus and now have an extra 60 cm of fabric which I have no idea what to do with! Any ideas? In any case it handles really well and didn't shrink much in the wash/dry.

Close up to see the slight stripe in the fabric

To add a fun twist to the pattern I decided to use some scraps of this snowman fabric for both the front and back facing.I would have a picture, but you know - if the garment I made am having a full blown war with ever surfaces on the blog, I'll link back!

The two half of the Raglan sleeves when laid out adjacent show how deep the dart of the dahlias sleeves should have been.

One thing which became really apparent while preparing the pattern pieces was the extent of the problem in the raglan sleeve of the dahlia. The curve at the top of the sleeve is significant and would make a deep dart in the 1 piece dahlia sleeve. The sleeve problem of Dahlia is one of the reasons I decided to revisit this pattern. I remember these sleeves coming together really easily and couldn't remember how they were constructed. It seems that the sleeves do work well in two piece, I may redraft the sleeves for dahlia based on these and try that one again.

The length of this dress is better too - I don't think I removed too much from the hem length this time

One of the changes I made to the dress was to remove the kickpleat from the back skirt. I ended up removing it the last time and this time after a fewdays wear i'm still not sure that i'm missing it? I think the next time I also need to remove a further inch fron the waist but the current adjustment means the dress sits almost right this was also revealed through a day's wear.

I don't know what happened when sewing the back - it seems to be pulling down?

So all in I think this dress worked OK. I'm not so happy with the pulling at the back or beneath the pleat at the front neckline I think this might need a slight FBA? The back neckline needs brought in a little as per my usual adjustment, but I can live with the back not being perfect. In contrast this dress took me about 8-9 hours including tracing, pinning and cutting as well as using tailors tacks to mark the darts compared with the previous 3 week marathon!

I'm still recovering from a kidney infection that absolutely flored me all of last weekend and the beginning of this week so for me the weekend can't come soon enough - on that note enjoy the rest of the week and heres to a great weekend!

Jen xx