Acid sun dress

Whadayamean I have to have a photo taken for your blog? It’s too early and too bright out here.

This is from the Brazilian pattern magazine, Manequim. The Curious Kiwi and Melissa from http://www.fehrtrade.com/ inspired (and enabled) me to get a subscription.

I’ve had a full year subscription and let it lapse. Why?

• Garments often come in only one size. That limits how many potential patterns I could use from each issue. Lots of styles I like aren’t in my size. I know I could draft up or down, but its nicer not to have to.
• There is less seasonality in the styles than I expected. I had hoped that a pattern magazine from the Southern hemisphere might be more seasonally aligned. You know, winter coat patterns when it is winter in Australia, sundresses in summer, that sort of thing. There are a lot of warm weather styles, all year round. I forgot that much of Brazil is closer to the equator than where I live.
• I don’t quite trust the patterns, despite the lovely garments Melissa and others have made and blogged about. Making one up would have helped with this!- doing it now, once the subscription has lapsed, is spectacularly poor timing. I wonder if the photographs are of designer garments that Manequim are providing patterns for, rather than the actual patterns made up. I don’t read Portuguese, so I can’t confirm this, but the same model is shown wearing garments across a range of sizes in the fashion shoots and the designer/company name is given in the caption, as is a price.

Technical details

Pattern: Manequim 12-2012-536

Size: The pattern comes in Brazilian sizes 38, 42 and 46. I made a 42 (roughly equivalent to a Burda 40) with a 3 cm FBA for my daughter. You can see the new side dart in the photo above.

Fabric: Fujiette (rayon) with fabulous colour and drape. Bought from my local bricks and mortar fabric store in Adelaide, Ferrier Fabrics

Changes I made:

The bodice lining got a 3cm FBA. This added a side dart and enlarged the existing waist dart. The dress front doesn’t have any darts, just a deep box pleat centre front and a second sewn tuck on each side close to the centre. I really had no idea what to do about an FBA to this! So this is what I tried:

I made the pleats in the paper pattern and overlaid my adjusted facing pattern piece. There seemed to be enough fullness and the second tuck opened out just over the bust point. So I redraw the side seam to accommodate the new dart (this added to the width) and smoothed the side seam back down through the bodice to the waist.

I added a channel to the waist with Kelly green bias and a brown cord to draw the waist in. The channel stops about one third of the way in. Copied from a RTW dress Felicity loves. This makes the style more flattering on her figure.

The back has an elasticized band at the top, making fitting easy.

The shoulder straps in the fashion picture appear to be leather with a D ring and studs. The instructions talk about a metal D ring too, but the cutting layout shows the straps acut out of the same fabric as the dress. I ditched the D ring idea and sewed the straps directly to the bodice.

Dads. They really are hilarious sometimes.