Star's Threads: February 2014 - Yes - 2014 (not a typo!) MAGAM is done!

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

February 2014 - Yes - 2014 (not a typo!) MAGAM is done!

This dress has been hanging on my project wall for 2 years waiting to be finished. Yes - that is correct, TWO years! But I can happily say it is finished now. I know I needed a little break from this dress because it was heading in the wrong direction, but two years was quite a long time!

This is Vogue 1135 - A Ralph Rucci dress - and I'm glad it is done. Looking back at my first posts about this dress - February 2, 2014 the starting muslin, and March 1, 2014 the dress sewn together, I can understand why it was hanging around for so long waiting to be finished - the fit at the waist was totally wrong, the zipper ended in the back in a way that resembled a sword sticking out of my backside, and I knew the hard work I put in lining up those darn pintucks would be ruined if I tried to adjust anything. Oh well - time heals all, right?

So after two years, I finally decided to try on the dress again - and really, it wasn't that bad. I'm over the fact that my pintucks don't line up perfectly in the back - the alteration I made only affected 5 of them by a little bit and from a distance, it's hard to see!

I ended up taking in the back starting at that top pintuck you see below all the way down to the hemline. Since there are no defined side seams on this dress - that was my only option unless I wanted some very oddly placed darts on the sides and that option would have been worse. Unpicking those pintucks and resewing them to line-up was also not an option - I figured if I tried to rip them out, I would run the risk of ripping holes in the knit and then the dress would be a total wadder. For the alteration, I took in a total of 1.5 inches at the waistline, tapering down to 4 inches at the bottom hemline.

Each sleeve has a gusset in the arm with a corresponding gusset on the bodice portion. On the left hand side the small "side seam" formed by the midriff piece forms a very odd angle, pointing backwards.

On the right side, their are the same gussets, but the midriff portion forms a seam that is straight up and down instead of pointing backwards. This was very strange I thought.

The dress is supposed to be lined, but I decided to skip that step so my inside doesn't look very finished. There was alot of fusing interfacing to seam lines and trimming involved in the construction. Looking back now, I don't think that middle "midriff" portion they call it needed to be interfaced. Here's the back with the invisible zipper.

More seamline interfacing and trimming.

Here's the front. Again, I don't think the "midriff" piece needed to be interfaced, but it's too late now.

So after finishing the alteration, the back is not as baggy as it was to start with and the swordlike zipper finish is no longer there. It still has a full pull lines here and there, but I could just be standing funny too. The gusset in the sleeves makes a funny fold on the underarm and the interfaced midriff portion changes the drape of that portion slightly.