Finishing my little black dress - #1249

Little black dress ... nearly finished!  Well, you can see it actually IS finished and worn once, already.

I got to attend a cocktail party (the perfect event for a little black dress) the night before the Nobel prize in Physics was awarded. Three honest to goodness Nobel Laureates were there in person, very exciting.  My husband is a physicist, so that was my "in".

Anyway, let me show you the inside of this dress.

Also, I'm going to re-sew the underarm area of the sleeve. I got a couple very nice, but corrective messages from people who's opinions I respect.

I used an invisible zipper, which I love to use.  If you invest in a good metal invisible zipper foot, they are so easy to put in. EXCEPT, I never can quite get the two sides to exactly line up, so I always put the zipper in BEFORE sewing up the rest of the seam it's going in. See the slight unevenness at the top of the zipper and the cooresponding unevenness at the bottom of the finished seam?  That little bit of a discrepancy can be trimmed away. The important thing is that the seam is smooth at the bottom of the zipper, and it is.

Share any tips if you know how to get those two sides to match up ... please!

Now I'm going to trim away the extra large seams along the sides.  Read my blog about fitting if you want to know more about this.

First I draw a line 5/8" away from my stitching line and then ...

cut.

I've already decided that this fabric does not need to be finished on the cut edges. I have already thrown it into the washing machine and have been handling it a lot and it hasn't frayed one teeny weeny bit. Why spend the time? And quite often the shadow of serged seams can show through to the outside after it's ironed, which I don't like ... who does?

Another way to keep the shadow of a seam allowance showing is to iron your seams over a seam roll. This is my mother's handmade seam roll. She made it while she was in an apparel design program.  Inside is a rolled up magazine which is then wrapped with some kind of padding and covered in 100% wool.  

I have to confess it is very tempting to open it up to see what old magazine is inside, but it's a great seam roll and my mom made it!

Here is the seam roll in action.  The majority of the pressure goes at the actual seam and is less at the edges of the seam allowance to prevent those cut edges making an impression through to the outside of the garment.

Just to be decorative, I used my scalloped pinking sheers to trim the edges of the neck facing. I also, tacked the facing to the shoulder seams to keep it in place.

If you remember, I cut this dress 2 inches longer than the pattern. I figure it can always be trimmed away, but is truly impossible to add back on. Anyway, this allowed me to make a slightly deeper hem than the pattern indicates.  I like a 2 inch hem on a narrow skirt, but usually not any deeper than that.

And I LOVE soft rayon hem tape. Unfortunately you can't buy little packs of it anymore.  I have 4 big rolls in various neutral colors so I can use it on most projects.

This double knit is so easy to slip stitch. Just the right amount can be stitched into without showing to the outside!

The rayon hem tape make a good stabilizing finish for the front slit, too.  This is important, since I didn't finish any of the seam edges.

And because I didn't finish any of the seam edges it is super easy for me to open up the underarm seam where the sleeve meets the dress.

This diagram shows how I sewed up the side seam through the armscye. And this photo shows the index of the actual garment just before I picked it all apart.

First I opened the seams about 2 inches in all 4 directions and then re-stitched them so the sleeve to dress seam is sewn last. This will make the dress hang better under the arm area. This is very important when sewing with a woven or tightly fitting garment, or heavy coat.  Even the people who wrote the nice but corrective comments saying I really should have sewn the sleeve this way in the first place said, it was probably OK to have done it the other way with a knit, but I don't want to set a bad example, so I changed it. Didn't take too much time.

Now I have a friend who has gently suggested I shorten it a bit. Hmmm That would take a little more time.  But, I love this. I'm always complaining that because I work at home all by myself, I don't have any office friends. But you are all becoming my office friends! Thanks.

And ... REMEMBER ...