My Christmas Roses Dress

Well, the Christmas holidays are behind us and, thankfully, so is the turkey and the ham )))) And as promised, I am sharing my latest finished project. As you may remember it was a lovely dress 102 from 12/2011 Burda Style Magazine. Originally it had a big contrasting bow in the front, but I only had 1 meter of this scarlet georgette, and it seemed that there was very little fabric left for the bow. It didn't hold me back too much though as I have had my eye on this burnt fabric flowers technique for a while, and this was a perfect opportunity to use it!

 And Voila!

oh yes- new iron for Christmas- I must have been on Santa's good list!

Here's more -I purchased this pattern on Burdastyle.com site as a downloadable pdf. Normally I do not buy individual patterns, getting the whole issue is only a few quid more expensive, but this time I was just too impatient. The problem occurred when I printed the pattern out and laid it on the floor to assemble. Some part's scaling was seriously off, and you could clearly see that it was a fault at the designer side, not my printer as it only applied to 2 sheets out of 28. Strange, but I didn't see this as an enormous obstacle.

The the fabric turned out to be so slippery, I literally had a quiet nervous breakdown every so often while working with it. I didn't use facings to finish the armholes, instead I cut out a duplicate from a wine chiffon and lined the top of the dress with it. The main fabric- the georgette is quite sheer, so I had to get a slip for it. First I wanted to line the whole dress, but then I thought a separate slip will be more practical- and could be worn with other sheer dresses I might make.

A word of warning about the instructions- not very comprehensive and I actually disliked their suggestion of how to work with the collar, especially their technique when attatching the front and back collar to each other. There are so much easier ways to do it, with a good result too. If you are making the dress, read carefully, here's what I did: 

1. I attached the lower end of the outher parts of front and back collar to the main front and back parts of the dress accordingly, only stitching as long, as the main parts go.
2.  Then attached the inner collar at the top, and stitched the bottom from the end to the start of the main part( which is already attached to the outer collar part to this same point- do not overlap or leave a gap there. I didn’t quite follow the instructions that tells you to fold the inner collar side allowances etc. I simply pressed the collar parts and inserted front collar parts (which was folded inward, right sides out, like the finished look) from the main parts side- into the back collar tubes, which are still wrong side out with visible stitches.
3.  Then I just stitched across, trimmed the excess fabric and pulled back though the main parts openings. 
4. Then I folded the inner collar back and hand stitched it in place on the inside.

Make sure the outer collar is interfaced and all lines transferred precisely to have a superb looking collar. It takes a lot of careful preparation for a good result. 

The flowers took me ages to make- each one of them is different and was sewn by hand onto the top of the dress. Overall, I like the roses more than the suggested bow.

The bottom of the dress is finished with a simple rolled hem.

And oh yes- Santa's been very good to me this year, I have a new iron and a new ironing board - pressing will never feel a torture again !