Silk chiffon dress: nothing at all like a Chux!

Felicity fell in love with this beautiful blue and white silk chiffon at one of Gay Naffine’s recent fabric sales.

He who Cooks thought it looked like a Chux cleaning cloth.

I think he was teasing. But there is some resemblance. The resemblance to a dish cloth was even more striking when I was giving this fabric the gelatine pretreatment in my stock pot! He likes the dress though and has said nothing at all about Chux since.

Technical details

Pattern: This dress was based on the Marion Bay dress (BurdaStyle 03/2013 #110)

I used the bodice after my adjustments for fit and to slightly raise the neckline.

The skirt lining was the same A-line shape as the original dress, so it sits closer to the body, while the silk chiffon layer was a half circle skirt that floats around it.

I modified the sleeve pattern to make them fluttery too.

The original sleeve was cut and spread, I traced the new shape onto another piece of tracing paper, and that was my new pattern piece,

I like how these turned out. They are fuller, but not puffy or poofy. Sort of similar to the skirt.

Very bad posing (this was the one spot I said not to pose, so of course she did, and smirked at me while she did). It does show the sleeve though.

Fabric:

Silk chiffon. Eek. Gorgeous but impossibly slippery and able to stretch out of shape in a microsecond.

I used gelatine pretreatment. This is a new to me trick that gave a bit more body to the fabric. I followed what Jo, of making it well, did. Threads also have a good post.

The gelatine pretreatment did make the fabric easier to cut out, but it didn’t give it canvas like consistency!

I underlined the bodice with my lining fabric, and this did make it easier to deal with. Particularly the darts.

I traced the dart legs with chalk, then basted through both layers as well as around the edges, by machine. I managed to avoid gathering and puckering by having the stretchy unstable chiffon underneath and the lining on top while I was sewing. I love “letting the feed dogs do the easing” for me.

Underlining made stitching the darts so much easier, and meant that the darts were not a feature with this sheer fabric, because all the doubled up fabric was underneath the lining rather than between the top fabric and the lining.

This wasn’t the case with the skirt, because it was lined rather than underlined, but there was only the centre back and side seams (plus the piecing I did at the hem because I didn’t have wide enough fabric..)

The skirt seams got the French seam treatment, and I stitched from the base to the waist because I’ve read somewhere that this stretches out bias less. Maybe it worked a bit, but the seam is still a bit bubbly. In the image above you can see the two extra pieces I had to piece in at the hem line.

After I washed out all the gelatine and let the dress hang to dry and drop before hemming, the side seams stretched out so much that I cut almost all of these pieces off to level the hem. So some extra French seaming in chiffon that I could have avoided!

See, hardly any piecing left, except a teensy tiny bit rolled into the hem

The finishing touch was the daisy trim

I had a small length of trim in my stash that probably came from my mother or grandmother. It was just perfect.

It went on the waist as a daisy chain,

and then as individual daisies sprinkled on the shoulder

and lower skirt.

I’m happy with how this turned out, and so is Felicity.

It really is the most delightful fabric. But I want the next project to be in nice stable cotton!