Pattern Review Sewing Bee Round 3 - Colette Rue

Well the good news is that I got through to round 3 of the Sewing Bee.

The challenge for round 3 was to make a garment using the pattern provided.  The pattern that they provided was Collette's Rue dress. 

I have to say that when I first saw this dress I wasn't overly thrilled - its really not my usual style - apart from the fact that I very rarely wear nice dresses I wasn't sure how easy it would be to fit that bodice,  But I decided to embrace the challenge.  I have been wanting to sew a winter going out dress for a while that I could wear to birthday dinners etc so decided that I would use this as the dress.

The day that I found out what the challenge was was also the day of the Pattern Review Boston area Meet-up.  This was being held at Pin Tuck & Purl a fabric and wool store in Exeter NH which is a good 2 hour drive away, so I wasn't sure if I was going to go.  I decided that it might be a good idea to go and check out their fabric selection as I knew I had nothing in my stash that would work, and I'm glad I did.  I spent the drive up thinking about what I wanted to do with this pattern and I had decided that I wanted to use two contrasting fabrics to really show off the design lines in the bodice.  Browsing around the store I found two fantastic fabrics from Cotton + Steel.  The first was a aqua blue cotton fabric with metallic sliver sardines embossed on it. 

 And the second was a linen cotton fabric in a neutral beige colour with styalised maps of the big cities of the world on it.  The colour in the maps matched the aqua colour of the sardine fabric so they went together beautifully.

With my fabrics in hand and a plan of attack mapped out in my mind I went home that night and downloaded my PDF pattern and printed out all the pages and taped them together.  I decided to go with version 1 of the pattern with the pleated skirt and longer sleeves.

According to the pattern, my measurements  fall between size 10-12 for bust,  at size 14 for waist and between 10 and 12 for hips. I decided to cut a straight size 14 to start and then trim down as required.

I used an old sheet to cut out a muslin for the 3 bodice pieces - back, lower front and upper front.  I sewed it up to the straight size 14 and found that it fit almost perfectly in length with my bust point sitting right where it is meant to according to the sew along. The fit at the waist was good, but there was a lot of excess fabric everywhere else. to reduce this I:

• Took 1/2" out of the center back seam, this brought in the neckline at the back as well as removing some of the excess fabric across my back. 
• Extended the back dart right up into the neckline tapering from the specified dart legs at the bottom of the bodice down to 1/4" at the neckline.
• On the front, I pinched out darts from either side of the neckline to the bust point to remove excess fabric and bring the shoulders in.
• Pinched out a dart in the middle of the arm scyth, also tapering to the bust point. 
• Pinched out about 3/4" of the lower bust piece along the front curve to get the material to curve under my breasts. 
• Moved the shoulder seam back by about 5/8" and tapered it slightly so that it sat on the top of my shoulder.

I then trimmed all my seams back to 5/8" and took the pattern pieces apart, leaving all the additional darts intact and modified my pattern pieces to account for these changes.

I was then able to start my second muslin.

 

For this I re-cut my bodice from the old sheet again, using my new pattern pieces, plus also cut the sleeves and skirt to test those. Again I started with a size 14 for each of these.

I had no problems with the skirt and made no changes for fit apart from removing 5" at the lengthen shorten line so that the skirt came up to just below knee length. 

With regards to the sleeve, I:

• Lowered the entire arm scythe by about 3/4" 
• Scooped out the front curve of the arm scythe by at least 5/8". 
• Scooped out a corresponding amount of the front sleeve head.
• Measured the new length of the arm holes and compared it to the length of the sleeve head curve and decided to go with a size 12 at the front of the sleeve and a size 10 at the back. I then tapered the sleeve to get a closer fit ending in a size 8 at the cuff. 
• Extended the length of the sleeve by 5" to make it a full length sleeve.

Once I was happy with the fit of the dress I turned to design. I went back to the fabric store and bought two cheap fabrics in similar colours and weights to my planned final fabrics and sewed together the bodice using these fabrics.  The back and upper front in a blue cotton fabric and the lower front in a neutral canvas material.  For the skirt I wanted the blue fabric for the majority of the skirt and the back of each pleat to be lined in the canvas fabric.  

In order to do this I had to modify the skirt pattern pieces. Each skirt pattern piece was split into 2 to remove the section of skirt that would normally be the back of the pleat. I then added a seam allowance back onto these edges. Separate pattern pieces were created for the back of the pleat consisting of the section of the original pattern plus seam allowance either side.

I cut and sewed the skirt using the two trial fabrics as well as the sewing in the sleeves in the main blue fabric.

I decided that the dress needed some more embellishment and played around with a number of different options for changing up the sleeve before settling on the sleeve cuff and placket idea so I drafted those pattern pieces and modified my sleeves accordingly. I still wasn't happy with it and after much deliberation I decided on adding the stripe down the sleeve. I modified my sleeve pattern pieces accordingly and then took one sleeve apart entirely and remade it to test the design.

Once I had this third muslin finished, I decided that I didn't like the placement of the fabrics on the bodice and that I wanted to swap the fabrics around. I originally had the blue cotton on the top of the bodice and the neutral canvas on the bottom of the bodice. In order to test the idea of swapping the materials I took a photo of myself wearing the muslin then took close up pictures of my two fabrics, after printing these photos I cut the fabric photos up and played dress up doll with the picture of the muslin. When I was happy with the new material placements I went ahead and laid out and cut my final pattern pieces. 

I sewed together the shell of my dress in my main fabric following the instructions in the pattern with the addition of a few extra seams to insert the pleat material into the skirt pieces. 

I made a number of other small adjustments as I was making my final dress, trying on the dress and then tapering a seam by 1/8" here or there just to perfect the fit for my body.

This dress is designed to be fully lined.  I decided that if I was going to line the dress I may as well make it reversible.  I found a super soft cotton lawn material with a pink/teal paisley/leopard print and cut out and sewed an second version of the dress (including pockets).  

I followed the pattern instructions for putting the shell and lining together and inserting the invizible zip.

When it came to the sleeves I laid the shell sleeve (consisting of the two blue pieces with the strip of map fabric down the center) and the lining sleeve on top of each other wrong sides together and treated it as a single piece whilst putting in the sleeve placket. I then sewed the outer sleeve together as normal and the lining together, and turned them inside right as one unit and sewed on the cuff. 

I'm super impressed with how these cuffs came out - I really took my time and made sure they were perfectly lined up both inside and out.

Finally I sewed the sleeves into the dress using the instructions in the pattern for the lined sleeve.

The hem of both the shell and lining were finished with a rolled hem on the serger and then the outer fabric was turned under an additional 1/8" to create a clean finish on the bottom of the skirt without any extra weight.

Pockets were included in both layers of the dress - you have to love a dress with good pockets.  I do find that these pockets are set back a little bit too far, but still....pockets!

There was a lot of contention about the drafting of this pattern, but personally I didn't find it that bad - I must have a shape close to the one that this pattern was drafted for.  Whist I don't love the darts over the bust I didn't find the curved shape under the bust as hard to fit as I expected.

Once the dress was finished I was in love - I love the way this dress fits - I love both the outer and inner fabrics I love everything about this.....unfortunately it did not get me through to the next round of the competition,  but I do have my consolation prize - a fantastic new dress!