Completed - DKNY Vogue 1179

me in silly hat

Hello! Here it is, my very first from-scratch knit dress all done, worn (trip to do our groceries and Goodwill - I lead such exciting life, yawn) and laundered.

I actually completed the dress very very early Tuesday morning (which is why the hemming is atrocious, but I can live with that for my very first knit attempt).

The pattern V1179 is very easy to follow, very beginner friendly (and just 3 pattern pieces) and I can see myself making more of this (I do have 10 yds of black ponte knit I bought from FabricMart.com recently!) in near future.

I first saw this dress on the Sewing Fanatic blog and thought that it looked great on the author, and subsequently saw a few other equally lovely versions around the blog world. So, when I stumbled across the recent BMV sale (i wasn't a member or anything, so I probably found this out from one of the blogs i read, or saw the ad somewhere) I had to have it (and 11 other patterns :( ) For someone who has only started, i have a huge stash of patterns (i haven't count them though, but believe me, it's a lot, like at least close to 50). Most of them I got for a quarter each at my favorite local thrift store (this is my favorite thing about US: thrift stores! we don't have them back in Malaysia).

Anyways, I think I follow the instructions okay, although I made some judgement call on the order of things. And I also added some stay tape on the neckline. I don't think the pattern ask you to, but i read that some others thought that it needed it and my heavy knit fabric sure does.

The fabric i used for this dress was from my stash. The color is very light yellow with bluish gray swirls, kinda look like lollipop i suppose, but it's not. I can't remember what type of knit it is (probably poly with lycra?) but it has a heavy drape. I did not fancy it as fabric when it arrived (bought this from Fabric.com a year ago along with lots of very very nice quilting cottons) and my thought was to use this as a muslin (since i never sewn knits before) but I like it okay as a finished garment. :D

Eventhough it is now fall and midwest winter is harsh, I can see me wearing it year round. I am all for layering anyways (unfortunately I still manage to feel a bit cold in the summer too!), and winter just means more layers for me.

So there. It took me days to finally put this up - the taking pictures part is my problem. But I did say i want to have a space to "document" my projects. I want to have a blog for a lot of reasons but i don't want people I know in real life to see it. That's silly i guess, what with Facebook and all the other social networking thing we got. But if I can, I'm keeping them separate.

Anyways, thing is, I have a bunch of projects going on in my head at a time, so once I'm done with one thing, I go straight into another. Right now I'm working on what I can consider as my winter staple: sweater dresses. I realise that when I was working, I practically live in the 2 sweater dresses that i had (but since I wore my down jacket even indoors at my desk in my office it didn't matter if i wear them everyweek), I know that this year I definitely have to make some. But that will be for another post.

Till then!