Cashmerette Concord T-Shirt Hack Round 2

Hi there! Don’t judge me, but this fabric was purchased to be a valentines day dress!  Hello, it’s April!  Hey, you promised not to judge!  I’m not a new sewist, but I’m new at buying fabric for my “stash”.  I pretty much try to look at what I want to make and purchase fabric.  This can be expensive because you don’t always find what you need on sale.  So then I changed my mind, ughh, fabric with no purpose.  I knew for valentines day that I didn’t want pink or red, but a print so I went with this Floral print.  Floral prints are always in right, so yeah, I purchased it.  This floral Liverpool (textured) knit is from Fabric.com.  I
was sold when I thought about these shoes, they are a good match.   So what did I make for Valentines day you ask? I made this dress. 

I have since added about 50 yards of fabric to my stash from my Fabric Mart trip and I now have a lil stash.  I went with colors and textures that I liked and now it’s fun to go shopping in my stash.  I still find gaps in my stash, I need some colored denim and a few more dress weight fabrics, but nothing too bad.  I’ve asked the boss for some shelves to accommodate a lil more fabric and he gave me the side eye but didn’t give me much lip so, win!  My husband is teaching himself woodworking so whenever I get lip about fabric, I kindly refer him to the cuts of unused wood, lol.

The shoes!

I’m a dress lover and I really like effortless fashion.  I don’t know why I’m so lazy,  but I really hate to fuss when it’s time to get dressed.  I literally want wash and wear clothes!  I know, right? Lazy!  I’m getting better, but my go to is a dress, I like simple dress with a pow!  Fabric is usually the easiest way to make a statement so I try and take care to match fabric to pattern design so they’re not competing.  If the dress is simple I like to highlight an interesting fabric.  The dress gets extra points if it doesn’t need to be ironed and is secret pajamas!!!  I love being comfortable, but I don’t want to be sloppy so I make good fitting dresses and go wild with fabric, don’t believe me, look at this dress, this dress and these dresses.

Ok, so I reviewed the original pattern here and the changes I made were going up a cup size to E/F (size 18) and see below on the fit adjustments.  Liverpool in my opinion doesn’t have the greatest recovery and I didn’t want a bodycon dress so I went up a cup size and graded up the hip to the 20 (where I measure for the pattern).  This ensured that my dress wouldn’t be baggy in the waist and hip and wouldn’t have any weirdness going on at the neckline.  Also, I don’t usually have negative ease in T Shirts, my preference is having the t shirt the same as my body measurements or an inch or two more, this is also contingent on how drapey the knit is.

Center back seam is worth the trouble

Cennetta the Mahogany Stylist helped me with the base of this T shirt by helping me assess the fit and read the muslin at Sew Camp.  The take away for this dress is that I had to fiddle with the shoulder, back and the neck opening on the scoop neck to get it where I wanted it.  This was to fit my sloping/forward shoulder and narrow the neck opening.   If you look at the first time I made this dress, the neck is wide, not bad, just wide, now I have two scoop neck variations.

•  For my shoulder, I took a deeper seam at the shoulder joint and moving the back shoulder seam allowance forward 3/4 inch and reducing the front shoulder seam allowance 3/4 of an inch.  
• The neck opening was too wide but a good length so I narrowed the front about two inches and raised the back neckline up an inch and blending the front and back at the shoulder.  
• One inch bicep adjustment
• Finally, I added a center back seam and seam allowance to help fit my slightly rounded back and sway back.  This was all identified after looking at the muslin.

Adjustment to the neckline

Originally a maxi but looked better shorter.  Added center back seam and seam allowance.

Also, Cennetta showed me a fool proof way to get my neckband to lay flat.   I drafted my own neckband, I did that by measuring the neck opening of the front and back (overlapping the shoulder seam allowance) and deducting two inches from that number to get my neckband length.  This way I can make a neckband on any T shirt pattern and it will guarantee to fit and lay flat.

I love this dress and like the T shirt as well.  Yes, I will make more, because, why not!