What a Day Trip Dress!*

~ I woke up to this today ~

January in November.

~ See that tree behind me? ~

No, not the two evergreens on either side...

~ The one in the middle with all the green leaves that haven't turned yet or fallen off. ~

It's 22 degrees out, the other day it was 50.  Oh my.

~ Meanwhile, this is my Trip Dress* from Tina Givens patterns ~

I won the cape thingy at a raffle. 

I threw on some extra clothes with it so I could wear it outside.  Like a stretch mesh T-shirt, wrist warmers, obi belt and stretch jersey straight leg pants that I've made and worn previously. 

The scarf, gloves and beret are so old I don't remember when 
or where they came from.

~ a rear view ~

~ obi-less ~

Which was how I intended to wear it.  

Too bad you can't see the collar, but it was too darn cold.

~ and a side view ~

Let me tell you, this Trip Dress was just that - a Trip! (ha). 

   

The fabric is challis.  I decided on a size S (my last one was XS and worked out fine), but I was worried about the wrap bodice coverage so thought more is more.   

If you're not a sew-er, you can skip to the end pictures.

• There's been modifications. I don't know what it was exactly, but the whole pattern seemed to be warped (?) or just oddly shaped here and there.  Anyway, the bodice didn't come together and I ended up adding a 3-4" wide binding on either side of the 2 front wrap pieces.  It actually ended up looking good, but I had to sleep on it to come up with the idea.  

• I usually use my own sleeve pattern for any TG patterns that call for set-in sleeves, but somehow I forgot to do that with the Trip Dress and used hers.  Her sleeve patterns are always symmetrical in that the front and back of the sleeve head is the same which makes it ill-fitting and pouf in the front among other things.  So mine does that, but with all the camo print, it's less noticeable.
 

•  I added lightweight interfacing to the collar because I wanted a more pronounced and structured collar than what the pattern photo showed. 

• I also added the lightweight interfacing to the cuffs of the sleeves so they coordinated with the collar.  Rather than slitting them and letting them hang loose and fluttering as in the photo, I doubled them back so they formed the bell shape and sewed them onto the end of the sleeve.  Still leaving a 5 1/2" long cuff.

•  I had a heck of a time trying to get the bodice fronts to overlap smoothly.  I tried one over the other and then reversed it to see which would work best.  I finally had to trim both of the edges of the bodices because no matter what I did they were wonky as all get out.  Nevertheless, they made an odd curve down the bodice neckline.  I believe, from the illustration, it was supposed to be an asymmetrical angle.  (This didn't have anything to do with my added binding because it was the same amount added to each side, so I don't know what was going on there.)

• Which leads to the skirt attaching to the bodice.  Oh my.  This is also supposed to be at an asymmetrical angle - high on one hip, low on the opposite hip.  The skirt is cut into 2 identical pieces, one for the front, one for the back.  They are both cut parallel and horizontal at top and bottom.   Got that?  The bodice, however, seems to be all over the place.  It, or mine, was not a nice smooth curve going high to low from side to side.  It was more like a roller coaster going up and down in small and then larger dips and curves.  And the skirt looked horrible pinned to the bodice like that.  Not to mention the skirt had huge triangular shaped dips at the side seam joins so that it laid 4" onto the floor.  So I endlessly trimmed the bodice until I got to a smooth curve that had one hip low and the other high.  I basted the overlapped front bodice together, pinned the skirts onto it and sewed it together.  

• Decided I had to have side seam pockets, made them, sewed them on and then sewed the side seams together from the sleeves down the side bodice and side skirt seams.

• The dipping skirt "hem" at each seam line looked ridiculous, in my opinion, with all the other asymmetricals going on, so I trimmed the triangular pieces off so that the hem ran at a smooth, straight angle.

•  Last, but not least, there were 4 hem pieces to be added.  Each were oddly shaped, truncated, horizontal triangles that were supposed to be sewn together end to end and then applied to the hem of the dress.  The way they were constructed, it allowed the widest end of the triangular shape to sit at the longest length of the skirt (which meant it dragged 4" onto the floor).  This is even after I cut the 4" or more off the dipping skirt hem mentioned above.  So.  The dress was already long and I'm 5'5".  I decided to fold the sewn-together-end-to-end triangular pieces in half lengthwise as if they were like binding (right side to right side) and sew them together.  Turn them right side out, press and then sew that narrowed version onto the raw hem of the dress, thereby nicely finishing off the dress.   

• I don't know if I would ever make this again, but if I did, I would like the lower waist aspect to be narrower, maybe higher, maybe not.  I would like the bodice wrap-over to either be straight or be obviously slanted.   I would use my own sleeve pattern.  I don't know, I'm tired of writing about it...

~ Here's some buttons I used ~

~ and my Docs from ebay ~

Time to skedaddle over to Patti's Not Dead Yet Style and then Catherine's I Will Wear What I Like when she goes live.  Come on by.