Party Dress Completed

My Party Dress is finished! It was finished last week already and I even got a chance to wear it to a little party but I had the hardest time getting good photos of the dress, in which the color of the dress would show. Eventually I had to take it outside into freezing temperatures, where my roommate helped me take the photos.

I spent the longest time ever on fitting this dress and all in all it turned out well. I followed the advice of Fit for Real People and chose the pattern according to upper chest circumference rather than bust measurement and went down a whooping two sizes from a 16 to a 12. I had to do a full bust adjustment and add some extra ease in the waist. Isn’t it strange how the hip, waist and bust measurements of a size 16 correspond exactly to mine and yet a straight size 16 results in the most terrible fit. Pattern sizing boggles my mind.

 

I also for the first time experimented with some more sophisticated ways of garment finishing. I used a Hong Kong seam finish on the skirt and used bias tape on the hem to make it easier to ease in the extra width of a rounded hem.

The only thing that sticks out like a sore thumb in this dress are the bust darts. There was just no way I could have made them smoother, without dimpling and bulging. I even converted the underbust dart into two smaller darts to be able to deal better with the bulk of fabric that had to be tucked away in the darts – but to no avail. They still look terribly frankensteined.

I was thinking that perhaps if you have a large bust and mine is a DD/E it is impossible to achieve certain styles. There is a limit to how big a dart can be to still look good and the amount of extra width and length I need to add in a full bust adjustment always results in monster darts. Is there a solution to avoid this problem or is it simply impossible to deal with all this fullness in one or two simple darts?

In future projects I am planning to make sure to reduce the size of my darts and rather convert the fullness into seams (like princess seams, which work well on a full bust) or gathering or dart tucks of varying sizes. Perhaps this is the only solution. And there go my dreams for this simple and perfect sheath dress with only a single, elegant dart. Sigh.