Wool Plaid Claire Dress

During one of my recent trips to Fabric Place Basement I found this piece of fabric in the remnants bin for $2.99/yard. 

As it was in the remnants bin there was no way to tell what the fabric content is, so once I got it home I did a burn test.  As I expected it was rather inconclusive.  My best guess is that it is a blend of wool and some sort of polyester.  It's quite scatchy but very warm.

I originally planned to make a coat out if it, but I've had enough of coats for a while, so I decided that it would make a nice winter dress.

My first thought was of a plaid shirt dress.  I looked at using the Cashmerette Harrison shirt, but realised that with all the princess seams it would have been a pain to pattern match.  Then I looked at the Grainline Archer, but that has no darts and I figured that it'd just be tent like on me.  I decided that I wanted something with french darts as they tend to be less noticeable in a plaid shirt so I started looking at the pattern I used for this shirt....but I never made a real pattern for that and as I looked at what I had I realised that I already had a pattern that I liked that had french darts, the Pattern Review Claire dress. It has the collar and yoke like a flannelette shirt, with an easy to wear wrap front.  Perfect.

I made a few changes to the pattern again after my last attempt.    The first thing I did was to split the front pattern piece at the waist line so I could work on the bodice and skirt separately.  I started work on the bodice. I wanted to grade up to a size 16 as my last Claire dress in a woven fabric was a touch small, but the sizing bundle changes at 14 so I only had sizes 00 to 14.  Instead I just added 1/4" to the bodice side seams.  I retained the 1/2" shortening of the torso about halfway down the armhole, but I removed the extra 1/2" the I originally took off at the shorten lengthen line.  I also made a slight change to the neckline at the front.  The bulge that allows for easing over the breasts was way too high for my body so I moved that down and added a bit of extra width across the front as well.

I'm really happy with how the front neckline sits now.

Next I modified the dart placement a bit.  Again the bust point was too high for me so I lowered that and then had to change the angle of the dart to match.  The dart now goes right into the waistband.

I also made the slit that the tie passes through above the waist this time rather than below as I found that that effected the way the dress sat.

The only other change I made was cosmetic.  I wanted to yoke to be cut on the bias and I wanted it to be a bit more prominent so I extended the yoke down about an inch at both back and front.

I also cut the neck bands on the bias, although I think I could have done with a bit better pattern placement. 

As the material was really scratchy I knew I wanted to fully line the dress.  I used a black poly fabric that I had in stash.   It's seriously slippery stuff and was a pain to sew, but it feels nice against the skin.

Unfortunately I ran out of lining material halfway through the skirt. I made it work as best as I could, but the front of the overlap isn't entirely covered.  That's OK, the part that's inside  against my skin is covered just not the part that goes over the top.

The layer that I'm holding up is the one that isn't fully covered by lining.

For the skirt, I used the front panel from view A, the slimline, but angled the center front out rather than having it straight up and down.  

Unfortunately I made a mistake when cutting out the pieces so in order to get the pattern matching right I had to move the side seams about a 1/2"towards the  front of the body.  In the end that turned out good as it makes the pockets more comfortable.

For the back of the skirt I used a full width of the fabric and pleated it.  I love a good kilt and wanted to make a nod to it in this dress but didn't want to fully pleat the skirt, that's way too much fabric around my waist.  I ended up taking a couple of pleats out at the side back just to slim down the look a bit as well.

The sleeves were per the Claire pattern this time - they worked beautifully and really sit very nicely.  I didn't bother pattern matching them with the rest of the dress, but they ended up aligning pretty well anyway.

Obviously I added pockets to the skirt.   Did I manage to get any photos without my hands in my pockets?

The final thing was to figure out the length I wanted.  I ended up going for just above the knee which was about 4 inches off the length of the skirt as drafted.  That's pretty standard for 5'1" me.

I love this dress.  Its warm, it's comfortable to wear and I think I got the fit pretty much spot on this time - a win all around.