Mama's got a brand new dress!

Mama's got a(nother) brand new dress!

And yes, she is happy with it, finally.  I'm happy too.

The dress is made in the 100% cotton stretch sateen print that I found in the sale section. I scored the last 2 metres of fabric and for a moment I feared that there wouldn't be enough to make the dress. Yikes, and there wasn't anymore fabric to go back to get!

This called for some creative problem solving, right after some coffee and thinking.

Luckily, the fabric didn't have a nap or pattern matching to contend with. I was able to fold the piece of fabric so that the salvages would not meet.

First, I would have to remove 3 1/2 inches from the dress hem. It is typically where I would hem the dress but I'll get to how I fixed this new problem.

I folded the fabric so that one of the fabric's salvage edges was about 9 1/2 inches from the fold and that was enough to cut out the dress front on the fold and the sleeves. This left me with a 2 metre length of single layer fabric with one salvage edge. It was enough to fold in half matching the salvage edge in order to fit the dress back. And enough scraps to cut out some pockets and bias strips!

I cut enough strips of fabric to make the bias tape for the neckline and used some for the dress hemline. It worked out great, second problem solved!

Bias tape is easy to make. I think that it gave the dress a nice pulled together look that I wouldn't have achieved if I used store bought bias tape. It is so easy, why not! Here is a link to the Vogue tunic that explains how simple it is to make your own bias tape.

Even though I did serge the bias tape shown in the picture, it was an unnecessary step. Since the tape is cut on the bias an unfinished edge would not unravel. I could have folded the edge under and hemmed it in place. So many options, all work equally well.

Even the lap zipper worked out nicely! The zipper is typically my nemesis but the sewing gods were on my side today.

Love it when things work out!