DIY Knipmode Dress #1/06/2018 or Another Denim Dress

These days I am busy sewing from the enormous stash of sewing magazines I have, no punishment, so many nice patterns that I have on my list so nothing to complain. 

Today`s make is another pattern from KnipMode magazine, dress pattern 1 from issue 6/2018. 

I love the seams on the front of this dress! 

In the magazine, the dress is made with a pencil skirt and short sleeves or with a more flared skirt and long sleeves. The dress is also fully lined. 

I made the version with the pencil skirt, no lining and used the longer sleeve pattern and added 7cm plus hem allowance. 

I traced size 36 for neck and shoulders and for the rest size 38. I made a test garment and based on that I made a few changes. I made a small video on how the muslin was fitting, if you would like to see it, you can find it here.

Fitting adjustments

Because I had a lot of room above my bust,  the same as in my other Knipmode dress , I took again out 3cm horizontally, on the front bodice ( at approx. 7cm down from the center front neck) and back bodice and from the sleeves only 1.5cm to get them fit back on my adjusted bodice.

 I also had to make a swayback adjustment, I had some fabric bunching at my back of the skirt and also the side seams on the skirt were swinging to the front. After taking 2cm out at the CB and blending to nothing to the side seam of the skirt, all these issues were gone.

The skirt was very long on me so I shortened it by 11cm.

Also based on my muslin I decided to take the side seams in by 1cm on each seam, now I am thinking that maybe 0.5cm per seam was better. The denim I used, has some stretch so it still is comfortable.

Sewing the dress

Usually, I don`t use sewing instructions but in case of patterns with special seams or, you know, different than usual two darts and a waist seam,  I do use the instructions. In this case, the text was pretty clear to understand ( of course if you understand dutch :)) , but I even understand how the walking vent was supposed to be sewn, so that is a plus for KnipMode.

I choose denim and that called of course for topstitching! When I need to do topstitching, I am using an older machine( second hand bought a few years ago )only for that. It is so much faster when I don`t need to change my thread and needle and adjust the tension for this part of the sewing.  I tested on a piece of my fashion fabric the color, stitch length and tension on that machine and that was set for topstitching only. If I had to do that only on one machine, I would sew as much as possible and then do the topstitching on those pieces and so on, to avoid all the changes after each seam.

My dress is unlined so I had to finish the neckline in another way, in this case with a bias band. Worked great!

In the magazine, they used a centered zipper but I  used an invisible one, I wanted an exposed metal one, but sadly I could not find one to fit, in my stash.

Conclusions

I love the seams on the front of this dress! What I don`t love are the raglan sleeves! I sew just a couple of times raglan sleeves and maybe that is a reason why I can`t get them fit me right or why I don`t like them. I love inset sleeves and I think if this dress had inset sleeves it would have been perfect. 

All in all, I like this dress, it was fun to sew and to topstitch all the seams. Pretty easy project and a nice dress for the fall. 

I love denim dresses and I have a few in my wardrobe, you can see them here and here. 

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I also made a video review on YouTube, if you'd like to see that you can find it HERE 

The action video is at the end of that video review, or here  at minute 11.14 :) :

Next project 

Next, I have another Knipmode pattern traced, from the same issue as above, 6/2018, this time dress 23 .

I have a few fabric options, you can see them in the video above and I think the dress is perfect for summer. 

Happy sewing !