Pink Dress

Here is the fabric and smocking thread chosen for today's dress project. The pattern is a simplicity sleeveless dress with contrasting collar. It calls for gathering the skirt before attaching to the yoke. I decided to try and smock a small section to achieve the gathering effect.



Here is the workspace laid out. I've cut out most of the pieces.



Here are all the pieces cut out, including the white contrasting collar and interfacing.



Here is the smocked section, in progress. The stitch is Vertical Ladder, from Smocking A to B.



Here is the dress, mostly constructed. The collar is laying below the smocked section. The sleeve binding is completed as well. I used a decorative machine stitch with maroon thread for the sleeve bindings. So far, so good!



Collar is ready to go on. In this pattern, the collar is pinned to the outside, and binding is used to enclose the seam. I used white thread on white binding with the same decorative stitch for the sleeves, on this collar binding. It's a subtle effect that you only see close up. The white fabric for the collar is not solid white - it has a subtle dotted pattern.



Here's the collar in place. The sleeve and collar binding went in with little difficulty. Seam binding is cut on the bias (I used something called bias tape). Bias is the stretchy diagonal direction of fabric. It lets you make curved things like piping and sleeve bindings without weird wrinkles.



As you can see, the smocking was a bit crooked. The pleater kind of wandered a bit while I was pleating in the holding threads. I wiggled it around when I put the pieces together, but it didn't hang exactly flat. It will go smoother next time since I'll pay closer attention to the edge of the fabric as it's being fed into the pleater.

Here is the beaded braid I put in as a hemstitched extra. I broke a sewing machine needle trying to zigzag it in, so I ended up doing this by hand.



Finished dress!