February's Dress

Here's February's Dress. I call it my Kindergarten Teacher Dress, and if I ever get to go help out in my children's Kindergarten classes, you can bet I will wear this dress. Made from this pattern:

It's baby cord and so was very handy in an unseasonably cold Texas winter.

I wanted a little break between finishing January's dress on the 31st and starting the next, but I think I only gave myself a week. And during that week I did something I've never done sewing before, which is . . . read the pattern instructions before cutting anything out.

That is probably a horrible confession to make, I mean, I've been sewing for years now, but it's true. And in this case, it made all the difference. I made sure I had a pretty good handle on the mechanics of how the pockets went together, and more importantly, the collar.

Here's some things I'd never done before this dress:

• Worked with baby cord, which ended up being very easy to work with
• Fudged on seam allowances in the pattern layout. I really, really wanted to use this fabric, so I made it work. I just had to sew it pretty quickly after I cut it out so I could remember which seams needed to be smaller than 5/8".
• Clipped seams before I sewed them. This dress has A LOT of curved seams and they laid/sewed some much better when I actually used this method (which was in the instructions, which I actually read before hand). Again, this might not be something I should share, but hey, the whole point of this goal is to become more of an expert.

What I learned doing this project:

• When, where, and how you pin a seam is very important. Pinning seams was my saving grace making this dress because I fudged the seam allowances, and it made a huge difference if put the pins in on my lap or on the ironing board. Probably that's mostly because my lap is so uneven, but I highly recommend using flat surfaces to pin. Also, I recommend pinning in the direction you will sew. Sometimes that means I have to do a little puzzle in my head first, but it saves me a few swears and some pins during the sewing process.
• I am not an expert at collars. This was only my second one and was hugely more successful than the first, thanks to reading that part like 5 times in the instructions before I did it. However, I could stand to make about 12000 more.
• Putting in snaps rather than buttons was a good idea, especially covered buttons, which I'm still not very good at. I did use four covered buttons for the pockets and the sleeves, (the fabric is A, B, C, D, and 1, 2, 3, 4 in convenient squares, they were just calling out to be made into covered buttons. What could I do?) and I still think there's one that needs a head put back on. Good thing the dress has pockets to store these things in.