purple pantomime

Nothing about this involves a pantomime.  It's just a word I enjoy and I thought you would, too.  You're welcome.

I could lie and pretend like this is a different pattern, but would you believe me?  This is, in fact, yet another rendition of the Darling Ranges pattern.  What can I say?  I'm stuck.  It's a nice basic pattern that is easily adaptable.  As you can see this time I've taken it up a notch and added a collar.

I still haven't looked into the swayback adjustment, though.  Nor have I bothered to wash, de-lint, or iron this dress.  My bad.  Let's move on though, shall we?

Yes my legs are really that white.  Welcome to Seattle.

I've gone with an A-line skirt again with pockets (gotta have pockets) and used the collar from   Butterick B5030.  The collar came out... erm... bigger? pointier? than expected.  It's okay though I guess.  I might modify it next time (yes, roll your eyes if you must, but there shall be at least one more of these).

This is my pensive face.  Thinking of all the darlings to come...

One thing I didn't do but I wish I had is interface the button bands.  I did that on my last rendition which you actually haven't seen yet (yes there's another one!) and it really makes a huge difference.  The material is heavy enough I didn't think it needed it but I'm adult enough to admit when I'm wrong.

I suppose a good blogger would've ironed out the most obvious wrinkles first.

The Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing is one of the few sewing books I have (for realz guys I've got 3 all together!) and I've been working on reading through it.  It's a big book, so it's quite the endeavor.  I used all the info it had on rolled collars, though, and I'm glad I did.  It actually recommended stitching the seam allowance just to the under collar, which I considered but obviously didn't do.  I couldn't figure stitching into that crazy point!  I just went for plain old topstitching instead.  Please don't laugh at my wonky stitches; my machine is old, that's the best I can get out of it.

I know I love to see the guts so here ya go.

Guts...  BRAINZZZ....

Check out how cute my pockets are!  I used contrast bias tape to finish the pocket edges and the neckline because, again, too lazy to be arsed with making self bias tape when I had some bias laying about.  The collar is just sewn to the neckline and then everything is finished as usual.  It's a nice, easy, clean finish.  Forget facings!

More guts.

Fabric: thrifted sheet.  I'm hoping to move onto real fabric sometime soon.  Up til now I've felt that my skills were far from doing justice to anything nice, but I'm building up some confidence.

Notions: thrifted buttons from the huge bag o' buttons for 99 cents and some bias tape scraps from other projects.

Pattern: Darling Ranges, as I've mentioned, with a self drafted skirt and pockets, collar from Butterick B5030

Time to Make: I've been working on this dress in spurts since Tuesday!

Make again: Must you ask?

This picture is totally unnecessary but I love it so I had to include it.  All the stitching is black with black buttons to match.  I'll pretend that this was a design element, but I was really just too lazy to go buy matching thread.  I actually ended up liking it.  Now my dress matches my shoes!

All in all, I'm pretty happy with this dress.  It could be a bit better, but it'll do.  Maybe I can do something about the button band later.  Perhaps my sewing book will give me the answer if I keep reading...