Vogue 1241 Kay Unger dress

I've had this pattern in my stash for a while and this fabric I bought recently reminded me of the pattern photo so I thought it was about time to try it.  I kind of wish I had tried it sooner because I love it and I think it would look good in both solids and prints.  In fact it might be better in a solid so you can see the details better.

Vogue 1241

My fabric is a stretch cotton so I planned to make a more casual, unlined version, but nevertheless it has turned out looking quite dressy.  Which is fine, a dress I can wear to cocktails and then throw in the washing machine? Thank you very much!



I made a size 12, blending to a 14 at the hips and apart from extending the front crossover (details below) I didn't have to make any other adjustments.  I'm really happy with the fit, but I'm glad the fabric has some stretch to it when I sit down.



Since I left off the lining I finished all the exposed edges on my serger, which takes a bit of advance planning to make sure you finish them in the right order because of course the instructions, which I largely ignored, give you no guidance on this (although to be fair the dress is supposed to be lined).  Alternatively you could just finish all the edges before starting to sew.  The other change related to the lack of lining is that I needed to add some facings, the original dress already had pieces for this designed for interfacing to be applied to the dress fabric so I used those.

The adjustment I made to the front crossover to avoid any gaping is the same as I did for this dress, just extending the amount of crossover, keeping the original neckline intact - but make sure you don't extend it beyond the princess seams.  I hadn't thought about this, but got incredibly lucky!  Obviously I had to make the same adjustment to the front facing too.  I handstitched the front down as well (obviously I am paranoid about gaping!) and now I look at these photos I can see that it is pulling the neckline so it doesn't sit straight - totally did not notice this is real life!  I will have to change it, right there is one good reason for taking photos for the blog!

I'm so glad I finally got around to this one and will have to dig out some of the other Kay Unger patterns I have hiding in my stash, I expect I will also be turning to this pattern again sometime.

My first lot of photos turned out rather blurry for some reason and my second lot where I tried out different locations in my apartment, the camera battery died after 3 shots.  These will have to do or we could be waiting an age for any blog updates.  Also more often than not I am unable to upload the most recent batch of photos onto my blog, I can see them in iphoto, but they are not available when I try and select them through blogger and I have to reboot the mac.  Its not a big deal, but it is annoying - does this happen to anyone else or does anyone have the solution to fixing it?