Vogue 8813 - all the checks

 Ages ago I saw an inspiration image of a shirt using multiple different checked fabrics and I'd been wanting to make a dress with that idea ever since.

I found the perfect fabrics, although perhaps I chose the wrong pattern. I'm still on the fence about that part....

The checked linens all came from Fabric Deluxe. They're lovely quality linen and knowing they were all the same weight/type made me feel comfortable about mixing and matching the fabrics within the one garment.

The pattern is, of course, that Marcy Tilton dress with the puppy sized pockets.

It's been a few years since that first version I made and my mum now has that one as well as her fishy linen one.

I sized down from my previous make and started with the size M for this dress. It was certainly only a starting point as I fiddled in various ways trying to like it.

Ostensibly I was sewing view C with multiple different fabrics and the pockets left open to hang (or catch on every doorknob and counter corner in reality).

But there was just SOOOO much fabric in the front half of the dress. The gathers under the neckline were causing the centre front section to plump out like a maternity dress. The sheer volume of fabric in each side section was falling inwards and making that centre front section plump out even more.

I just wasn't feeling it, at all.

It sort of looked better when I put my hands in the pockets and pulled the dress outwards. So first I tried threading some thin hat elastic (we call it mask elastic these days, right?) into the rolled edge of the pockets. That made a wee bit of difference to the front section (maybe a trimester's worth less fabric pooling?) but now I had gathered side saddle bags to contend with as well.

So, I pulled the elastic back out and decided there was no way around it: I had to take the volume out of the centre front panel. That meant undoing all the rows of gathering stitches and then unpicking the collar. The centre front panel was cut down to width so that when it was ironed flat it was about the width that the gathered panel would have been at its narrowest point.

It still hangs a little oddly at that point where the pockets pivot off the centre panel, but when I'm wearing it, and in motion, that bothers me less than when I was trying it on and standing in front of a mirror.

I added the buttons and the pleats into the pockets in order to take out some of the saggy volume. Sadly that means some of the visual of the inner pockets being in the lightest, contrasting linen was lost. By this time I was very much of the midset thta finished was better than perfect and I was ready to knock it off and move on to somethingelse.

Having said that I wore it for a few days and really quite grew to like it. When the hotter summer days hit and I want a loose, linen tent to wear I think it will be a much loved dress. 

And, happily, there'll be enough left-over matching linens to make that button up shirt when I do tire of wearing this dress.

Details: 

Pattern: Vogue Marcy Tilton 8813 (now out of print)
Size M - with a big reduction in the front panel
Fabric: Check linens from Fabric Deluxe
Buttons: two big, chunky, black plastic button from Jimmy's that I didn't take any close up photos of.