Fabricista Fashion Challenge Week #2!

First, I want to say thank you to everyone who voted for me last week!! I was so excited, and surprised to win for the week!!  Thank you!!

This week we were to take a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress as our inspiration, and make a wrap dress.  This challenge was difficult for me because it was so hard to pick which era I wanted to go with for an inspiration dress! In the end I choose to make my dress inspired by her recent line.
Here is my inspiration dress:


I chose Vogue 8379 as my pattern and made some adjustments for my body type.
*1/2” swayback
*1/4” forward shoulder adjustment
*1/2” square shoulder adjustment
*Size 14 for shoulder, 16 for bust/waist, and 20 for hip (all 1 size lower than my measurements for less ease)



I’ll be honest, I’ve never made a wrap dress and never worn one either. However, the pattern instructions are great and walk you through each step with helpful pictures. I made a test dress first, it fit well and only minor tweaking was needed so I moved on to the final dress.



I love that there is an opening in the bottom of the bodice on the right side to allow one of the straps to go through when wrapping around. I don’t love that there is a ton of ease in the sleeves. Yuk.  I used my serger for most of the seams, only using the regular sewing machine to baste when instructed.



I was inspired by the current line of DVF dresses because I love a great color blocked outfit. Sometimes dresses look awkward on my body (due to my pear shape) so the solid on top with print on the bottom helps keep a separation between my top and bottom halves. I wanted to keep the iconic ¾ length sleeves with the flared cuffs but left off the collar to keep it more modern looking. Can you believe I actually put the cuffs on the wrong way at first? Ugh! I had to sit and unpick the serging from each one and then re-attach the correct way. 



I blind stitched the hem by hand and tacked down the facing on both the bodice and skirt in selective places to keep them from flipping out. I disliked the idea of a center back seam on the skirt, but understood after cutting my material that this is the only way to save on fabric. I was very careful to match the print on the center back seam to try and hide the fact that a seam is there.





I’m very pleased with my dress and happy to have made something out of my comfort zone that I’ll actually wear.



Fabric:  2 yards of “Regal Blue Poly ITY” from Hancocks; I had to pick this up on Friday specifically for this challenge.  $12.74.  2 yards of “Watercolor Floral Print ITY” from FabricMart, purchased July 2015, $9.00.  I absolutely love this fabric and will hoard my last 2 yards as long as I can!

Total for the dress: $21.74
Total time spent sewing the dress: 4 hours



This week’s entries are all in and posted so head over to FabricMart’s blog to see them and vote for your favorite!!