Goddess dress

Okay, I've decided to fire this blog up again, after a long absence. I was somewhat annoyed by how long it takes to load photos, but I think it might be better now.

I made this dress from Burdastyle magazine pattern 7-2010-117, for my niece, Malia. Available for download at Burdastyle.
It looks fine in the photo, but it is about 2 sizes bigger than I would have made for myself. The ITY fabric is really stretchy. This is the second version of the dress I've made. 

The first was in white, for my daughter, to wear at a wedding. And yes, she looked almost too fabulous. We were concerned about her having exposed shoulders in the church so we added a dark blue military style jacket which I think went perfectly with the dress. She loves contrast, too. But guess what--all the bridesmaids were shamelessly wearing completely strapless dresses! Yes, you knew it! At the reception, my daughter had a little bit of slippage of the upper edge of the bodice while she was dancing, but well, she moves around quite a bit. Malia really liked the dress so I promised her one, which conveniently  arrived around her birthday. 

Some sewing details: On the white version I underlined the whole dress with self-fabric. This was necessary, as it is white. However, this thickened the seams. It was okay, as no one but me would notice this. The directions have you doubling the fabric for the drape but I didn't think this was necessary, so I used a single layer for the navy version. You should experiment with positioning the lower end of the drape before sewing it in, somehow. An afterthought on my part. I think different fabrics definitely drape differently. On the navy version, I twin-needle stitched the hem, but on the white version because of the underline, it would have been too thick, so I used the pseudo blind-stitching feature on my Pfaff.