Green Striped Purple Accent Insta-Dress-Design

My New Tiny Workspace

On Monday I decided it best to rearrange the furniture in my room. Mostly because Puese mentioned it, and we were going to do it on Sunday, but we ran out of time. With this new layout, I've created a small sewing station for myself that can stay up and not have to be taken down after each project. This is good news, because that fact will lend to accelerating my project turnover. I find that I'm more diligent about something when it's in my face, and there's less set up. So; after organizing my box of remnants, I finalized my decision to finish up as many projects as I can in the next two weeks. That is a general statement, so the number I put onto this project list is 8. So by the 6th of May, I will have done 8 remnant projects.

The fabric I chose

I started with my lime green and white striped knit. I trolled pintrest for a while to get ideas and came up with a combo of several DIY posts. I also decided to use the purple knit that I have to accent it. At the time, I thought the loose idea of a finished product, that I had in my head, would be kinda cute. However, in my head, I have a pretty decent body image, so it's not as cute ON as I would have hoped. Regardless; here it is.





I started by folding the fabric in half longways. Then I stitched up from the raw edges towards the fold, stopping where I marked the arm hole. I marked the armhole a little larger than 1/2 of the widest part of my upper arm.





Then I cut out a hole for the head and pinned in the sides so it didn't look just like a lump. The neck hold is about 10 inches wide. The curve of the back neckline drops down to about 1inch, and the front curve drops down about 3inches. After pinning the sides in on Me and then my dress form, I laid the fabric flat to even out the seams so they matched.



After I stitched up the sides so the bodice matched the contour of my waistline, I trimmed the excess fabric off. After trying it on, I could have hemmed up all the raw edges and been done. But NO... I just had to add in the purple fabric. I couldn't just make the purple something separate that could be worn together... Grr.








I had to go and add a small skirt thingy to the bottom. I did this by cutting the purple the same width as the bottom of the green, and about 12inches thick. Then I folded it over and stitched it together to make a long tube. Then I sewed this tube to the bottom of the dress.

But NO! I couldn't just stop there, I had to incorporate the purple into the rest of it... AND I had to do something about it's transparency. So I opted to make a lining. But! because I'd already cut the purple to make the silly band at the bottom, my options were limited. I took the fabric and stitched it to the bodice, then cut off the excess at the bottom, and used that on the back side, over the butt and did the same thing. But that was incredibly shapeless and there was no way in hell that the limp fabric would cover the breasts.

    

So I added in a little sweetheart neckline rouche. (Pardon the stitching, I'm not used to working with this kind of fabric, and apparently my machine isn't either, so the zigzag got F*d up.) I also knew that I had an old bra in my sewing box that I don't wear because it's pretty much translucent. So I decided to give this number a built in bra. I tacked the neckline of the purple to the top of the cups, and then the edge of the green neckline to where it intersects with the bras strap. 

Like I said at the beginning, I'm not actually happy with the results. I may end up removing all the purple and hemming up the green to make a t-shirt... That is if I haven't already jacked it up too much already. maybe it would be better if I didn't have such a large pooch hanging off the front of me. But this is what I get when I design in the process... things that don't actually fit me in a flattering way. Oh well... On to the next thing!!!