Love it! Simplicity 1804

Truth is, it's cool and rainy here, and there is no reason on the horizon to believe that summer will ever come, but I went for it anyway.  A sort of triumph of hope over reason.  For me, this is the sort of dress I would want to sling on over a bathing suit and loll off the beach in flip-flops to a casual restaurant for fish tacos.

This, of course, is ludicrous!  Even in a good summer, wellie-boots are more likely than bikini's and fish tacos are pretty much unheard of, though cream teas make a good, if radically different, substitute!

It's too cold and rainy to get a picture outside, or to take a decent one inside for that matter!

Never mind, I really love this dress.  It's soooo comfortable.  Like wearing a nightgown.  It's modest, but the fabric gives it some attitude.  I can wear a bra with it, though I would note that the neckline does plunge.

Here is the side view.  I had enough fabric to eek out this dress with  reasonable symmetry from the front and the back, but I did not have enough to play with to get the side seams matching up harmoniously.

I bought the fabric a couple of years back from Gorgeous Fabrics.  I started to fret that if I didn't sew it up soon the fabric would look dated before I could get around to using it.  I'm telling myself that I just managed to "make the boat" on this one.

This was my attempt to take a picture of the back of the dress for you.  Not really something I could manage on my own with a mirror, lol!

The fabric is a slinky-poly lycra knit.  The kind of stuff that is comfortable to wear and easy to launder.  As for sewing, it doesn't curl up at the edges, but it also doesn't iron well (melting anyone?) and it is tricky to finish hems and turn under sleeve edges.

I decided to leave the hem as a simple cut edge and not to finish it as this is a casual dress; it won't unravel; and it is hanging perfectly as it is.  I did want to finish the sleeve edges though.  Trying to turn the fabric under twice and sew it up was going to be a nightmare with my sewing machine.  No serger or coverstitch here.

I tried using some vilene iron on bias tape.  The kind with a chain stitch down the middle that BurdaStyle so often calls for.  The results were terrible.  Lettuce leaf effect.

Too stretched out and wavy.

In the end I used some narrow, black, pre-made bias tape to finish off the arm holes.  This was simple to do and worked out well.  

This was just a test piece done with some left over quilt binding.

As you can see from the front this was much better.

For anyone who wants to see the pattern details for Simplicity 1804, here they are.

Simplicity 1804, I made view A.

This was a nice easy project.  I should really bite the bullet and sew some much needed pants/trousers, but I've gained a little weight and the vain part of me, really, really doesn't want to face up to it!