TL; DR – Use clips instead of pins for slippery jersey fabric, sometimes it’s ok to do the steps out of order, oh and stitch length matters!
This is my second wrap dress using the classic Vogue Pattern 8379. This time around, I chose not to add a collar and did short sleeves instead of long sleeves. The floral print jersey is honest to goodness the softest jersey I have ever felt, let alone sewed with. I’m wearing the dress right now, and it is so soft and comfortable…
The downside is that the fabric was slippery AF. The pins kept slipping out of the fabric when I was trying to sew it, making it hard to make sure everything stayed lined up. Finally, as I approached having to do longer stitch lines and realizing I didn’t have enough pins, I switched to my clips. GAME. CHANGER.
I also remember when I made my first wrap dress, doing the hem was a pain because the bodice of the dress is actually quite a) heavy and b) cumbersome, between the added weight of the facing, the pleats, and oh yeah, the freaking mile-long ties that get caught under the wheels of my chair all the time. I knew from the previous dress, as well, that the length of the skirt was fine when just hemmed normally, so, folks, hold on to your hats because I DID SOMETHING OUT OF ORDER FROM THE DIRECTIONS WHICH WAS HEMMING THE SKIRT BEFORE I ATTACHED IT TO THE BODICE.
I also hemmed the sleeves before setting them, which meant sewing a straight line rather than in a circle and OMG GAME CHANGER.
The hemming process was so much easier this time around because I wasn’t constantly fighting with the bodice while sewing the hem. Nothing got accidentally caught, I didn’t stretch out the ties because I kept running them over with my chair.
There was one snafu, which was I was sewing some stay-stitches on the pleats for the bodice, and I forgot to shorten the stitch-length back up when I started sewing the ties. No big deal, I thought.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
I put on the dress for the first time and went to tie is and the ties were…less that solid. The stitches kept pulling and bunching and…Oops. So I ended up having to do a top stitch on the ties to stabilize them a bit more. It still pulls a bit, but not nearly as badly, and really, it’s a tie dress, no one can tell except me because I can feel them pulling when I do the wrapping and tying.
You may also notice that it ties in the opposite side from the first dress I made. This is mostly to cover a whole bunch of sloppy errors I committed on the underside of the wrap dress when attaching the tie. By making it tie this way NO ONE WILL SEE IT OR KNOW I SCREWED UP!
Anyway, I love the dress, and I have two more 70s-style print jersey fabric that I’m going to make the collared version of with the longer sleeves once fall rolls around. I really enjoy this pattern, the dress looks fantastic on me with no alterations, and I am excited that this is actually becoming a super-easy sew that it is advertised as.
Especially if I use clips instead of pins.
