The sea of turquoise

It's not a secret that I love all shades of blue although I don't often wear turquoise. And then I saw this beautiful jacquard fabric and I could not help myself. I actually have this fabric in royal blue as well.

The dress is actually a mash up of Sew Many Dresses off the shoulder bodice and Simplicity 1880. I really wanted to make something using one of the sewing books I own. Somehow I never remember about them when I want to make new clothes! It would be a pity to have these books just sitting on my shelf! I picked up "Sew Many Dresses" mainly because the patterns were attached in a paper form. There are quite a few gorgeous options in there. I like the whole "mix&match" thing. The books also shows the basic dart and pattern manipulations to get the desired look. 

I did have issues and I'm not really happy with the fit of this dress. I chose size 8 in the waist and graded up to size 9 in the bust. The off the shoulder part caused me a lot of headache! Firstly the shoulder seam angle was (and still is) wrong. Secondly it was way too loose across and it was gaping terribly. I've tried taking it in at the seams but it was not helping much. As I finished the edge off with bias binding, I have also tried easing the bodice in with little improvement. Finally I decided to add couple of darts at the neckline. Not happy with the solution but it kind of worked. The instructions are not too very great when it comes to finishing the dress - I opted for bias binding but was not sure on how to finish the armholes. After trial and error I have sewn the bottom of the armhole as I would normally do. The top edge was machine stitched to the dress and then stitched by hand so it's not visible one the outside. 

I should have lined the dress. It would look much nicer and hopefully that would be enough to fix the back wrinkle issues. This dress surprisingly gets tons of compliments and I always feel a bit weird hearing them! I mean it's ok when people like things I made well but to me this one is just not good enough. I probably won't be wearing it often. But I think I learnt a few things so there's that!

The armhole finish (my overlocker had tension issues but I've only noticed it after it was all done!)