Adelaide #2 in double gauze

For Mother's Day, we set out to Santa Cruz for a lovely brunch at Gabriella Cafe (wonderfully adorable place, and worth the drive!).  We got to SC early and I could request anything I wanted on my special day, so I made my family take me to Hart's Fabric for a 20 minute, whirlwind shopping spree.

This amazing double gauze by Kokka ended up in my basket, originally intended to be another Hayden top.  Somehow, I must have requested the wrong amount and when I got home, I realized I had 2.5 yards of the stuff!  Change in plans--the fabric was going to be a dress!  At 45" wide, it was enough, with not much left over.

Crazy stuff: the day after my post about the drafting changes I made to the armscye of the Adelaide Dress, Colette released an addendum with a revised version of the pattern!  Clearly, it had nothing to do with me, but it was nice to see they take the feedback from their users seriously.  The fixed both the strap angle and the armscye draft!

I sewed this dress earlier this week, but waited a couple days to finish it while I waited (not very patiently, I might add) the 2 days it took for Snap Source to ship my navy snaps.  Unfortunately, the "capped prong ring" type that I bought don't work with my snap pliers--they are too small for the pearl snap attachment and too bit for the normal ring attachment.  So, I improvised and put a scrap if thick fabric in the pearl snap attachment and it worked.  I am determined to never resort to the blue pound-with-a-hammer tool again.

I wanted to have snaps that blended in with the fabric so I could wear the dress with a particular belt, and felt like the pearl snaps or any other type of snap would compete with the gold buckle.  I've been waiting to make a dress that works with this adorbs scalloped belt (from Boden).

Here in Northern California, this is how I wear all my dresses: with a cardigan.

How much do I love just making a pattern without testing the fit?  I love it enough to have a wardrobe full of multiples, and the strong desire to get a basic set of perfect patterns.  I'm working on it!  There may be one more of these in my future....

Adelaide in chambray

I didn't even know it was "Pattern of the month" when I selected the Adelaide pattern with my Seamwork credits. Nice!  And this is only the first of two I've made...

I really wanted another chambray shirt dress after I chopped off this one to make a top (scroll down the page a bit), so I bought a bunch of chambray fabric at Stonemountain and Daughter.  I still haven't found the perfect shirt dress pattern, so when I saw Adelaide, I thought it was a good stop-gap for the summer.

As a student in Apparel Production, I looked at the printed pattern and immediately recognized some issues.  The back arm scythe was shaped a little weird (see above, the original line is the solid blue line and dotted white line) so I redrew it to have a more shallow curve.

Additionally, the seam at the shoulder strap was angled the wrong way, at least for the smaller sizes (see pattern section, above). I really can't fathom why the shoulder seam would angle up for the smaller sizes and angle down for the larger sizes.  In any case, it should angle down, so I redrew that, too.   Final alteration was to reduce the bust dart intake, for a quick-and-dirty small bust adjustment.

After the minor adjustments, I sewed up the pattern as written and it fits beautifully!  For sizing, I went with size 0, grading to 2 at the hips.  In the end, I don't think I needed to grade up, but having a row of snaps down the front made me want to allow for a bit more wiggle room.  No one at the boys' school or the grocery store wants to see a peep show, so best to be a little conservative.  

Speaking of snaps...I've always used the standard blue pound-it-with-a-hammer snap tool.  I hate that thing for so many reasons.  So I splurged (with my 40% off coupon at Joann's) to buy the next level up in snap tools (kudos to Shams for going all the way!).  Holy crap, kids, how did I live without this?  It makes applying snaps FUN.  And QUIET.  Seriously, guys; fun AND quiet.  I planned another Adelaide so I could apply more snaps (and bought specialty colored ones to match my garment!).  Then, I applied snaps to the cuffs of the top chopped from my former shirtdress. I {heart} snap pliers.  

Initially, I thought the dress did a good job of hiding my bra straps, but then I saw this photo (above), so I'll modify that to say that it does an OK job at hiding bra straps.  Certainly better than most tank-style dresses, so that's cool.  

Overall, I'm really happy with this garment.  It's a work-horse type of dress for me.  Something I can wear to the park, class, strawberry picking (like I did on Mother's Day, in this dress, in the mud), woodworking (like I did today in my son's Kinder class, in this dress, a mere three days after I wore it last), cycling (well, maybe next week) or cleaning toilets, and feel comfy the whole time. Multifunctional, I tell you!  Final words: by the snap pliers, and, I'd definitely recommend this dress, with the caveat that I had to make some drafting changes to the pattern.  Once my navy blue snaps arrive (tomorrow!), I'll be done with version 2!