Gertie's Sweetheat Sundress in Gingham

I managed! The dress turned out not too bad indeed, in fact I'm quite happy with the result! As always I sewed a seam only minutes before I rushed out the door, and as for now, the dress is only lined in the top. I'm afraid the seam allowances in the waist will suffer from yet another layer, as the pleats make the seam in the waist rather thick. 

I shortened the waist with 1.5 cm, and due to my swayed back, I shortened the back piece 1 cm in the centre back, and evened out to the side seams. I also took in 1 cm on front/back piece under the arm and evened out to the waist. The bias band was too wide in my opinion, so I shortened the height with maximum 2 cm towards centre back. 

I made a faux button placket from increased seam allowance on the back pieces, and when I attached the skirt I just made a fold and top-stitched. The zipper was therefore moved from centre back to the left side seam, and I inserted it with lapped technique.

The pattern is very easy to work with, however, I'm a bit surprised by the sizing. According to the size chart, I'm closer to a size 10 (39"/32"/41") in bust/waist, but when I compare the adjusted pattern pieces with the original pattern, I'm closer to a size 8. A possibility is, of course, that the pattern have taken boning into account, and therefore extra width to the pattern is added. 

~~~*~~~UPDATE~~~*~~~

Yay! On the front page of BurdaStyle!

The birth of Gertie's Sweetheart Sundress

My sewing machine is up and running again after moving into our new flat and unpacking my sewing space. It took some time to decide on which project to start with, but since Gertie's new book is out, I though that I wanted to give it a try. There's so many nice patterns in her book and I'm determined to sew through some of them. My favourite is The Wiggle Dress, but I assume it'll require a lot of fitting, and I didn't want to hop into that as my first Gertie-project.

So The Sweetheart Sundress is my first from Gertie's book. I got so inspired by this dress with  red buttons down at the back, and slashed into my black and white gingham fabric that I've had for ages. I didn't reflect on adding seam allowances or not, as it didn't say anything on the pattern pieces. Also, I had read in the book it says (p. 125) that Unless otherwise noted, all the projects in the book are constructed using a 5/8"- (1.5 cm-) wide seam, and regarded that as an advice. I happily added 1.5 cm in the side seams (except the centre back where I added 3 cm in each side to get the overlapping button placket). I was really eager to try it on to see how the fit was...

Something is wrong, and I bet it is the fact that every seam now has 3 cm seam allowance, adding up to 12 cm too many... I am really happy with the front, though, so I will try to remove the seam allowances from the sides only. The back suffers from having too much fabric in the height grain, creating the classic sway back fabric fold, and I will do my best to remove that too. Here's a teaser of how the back will look like: