Finished project: Inari Dress

I bought this fabric a couple of years ago at Fabricana. I just couldn't resist the print. It's a medium weight knit, almost like a sweater knit, so right away I knew I wanted to make a t-shirt dress of sorts with it.

 

Fast forward to a couple of years later, and it's the Inari craze everywhere on the blogoshpere (still is!). Great versions of that pattern popping up everywhere in my blog roll so despite my will to try and not by new patterns, i finally caved and bought the dowloadable pdf.

Because the print is pretty bold, I wanted to break it up a bit, so I decided to do the sleeves in a plain colour. I was lucky to find at Fabricana again, a knit that matched almost perfectly the colour of the main fabric background.

Because it's a pretty basic pattern for a loose fitting garment, I didn't want to  spend time making a muslin, so based on my measurments, I just went ahead and cut the size 36 (which is also the European size I normally wear in RTW), and cut my fabric. 

Matching the pattern at the side seams was a bit tricky. I could easily match the vertical lines, but it proved impossible to prevent the repeat motifs from being cut off or repeat twice. Oh well, i can live with it.

For such a simple pattern, this dress gave me quite a bit of fitting issues. When I first sewed up the pieces, it just looked like a shapeless sack. I could tell there was way too much fabric at the center of the front and back, so I went back to the pattern and folded over about 1.5 cm at the center front and center back.

Another problem I had was excess fabric at the armhole. To remedy that, I pinched a 3cm dart at the armhole. I'm not sure how common those are, usually you see darts at the side deam, but that seemed to fix it. I aslo took about 2cm off the height of the armhole at the shoulder.

One thing I had noticed on other blogger's versions, before buying the pattern, was that the armhole seemed to pull at the front when the arm was extended away from the body, resulting in the armhole seam shifting out a bit. You can see what I'm talking about in these different versions by BeeMade,  Closet Case File and this one by House of Pinheiro . I do love all three versions of their dresses (Bee has made a few of them, all of them really great!) and they've all done an amazing job sewing them. I'm just noting a design aspect of the pattern that I had noticed and was slightly concerned about.

I did do a bit of research before sewing the pattern, and the only thing I could find was Diane of Sew Santa Fe commenting on how low the armhole was on her version.

I don't know if any of my armhole fitting issues had anything to do with this specific drafting, but in case someone has ran into the same problems, I thought I'd mention it here. From the looks of it, I am the only one who was bothered by that anyways.
 

I had already cut my dress and didn't have anymore fabric, but thankfully, since I had removed about 3cm of width on both front and back, I was able to recut new pieces from the same ones. I did lose a couple cm of length, and I had to rake the shoulders in at the neck to avoid a gaping neckline,but luckily the finished product doesn't show any of this.

Because I reduced the armhole height so much (between the shoulder and the dart, that's 5.5cm total, about 2"), I had to do quite a bit of redrafting on the sleeve cap.  I think I might have made it a bit too narrow as a result but that could easily be fixed if I make the dress again.

After recuting the pieces and re-sewing it back together, the dress still felt too wide on me. As much as I wanted to like the cocoon shape (and it looked so great on everyone else!) it just didn't work on me. I don't know if it's my general curveless-ness, or that I cut the dress the wrong size to start with, or maybe my fabric was a bit too drapey for it to work. A lot of versions that I saw used thicker/stiffer wovens with more body, so maybe that's the key. In any case, I ended up recuting the side seams of the back to a much straighter line, and eventually managed to get a shape I was happy with.

I didn't adjust the length of the dress at all (I'm 5'11 and it's designed for a 5'8 silhouette). When I originally put the pattern up in front of me, the length in the mirror looked ok so I just went with it. But I forgot to take the slits into consideration, and those ended up hitting quite hight on my thigh. A bit higher than I would care to show at the office. But nothing a pair of black tights can't fix.
In the end, I'm still quite happy with the result. The uneven, split hem and the rolled up sleeves where the two features that really attracted me ot this pattern, and they turned out well. 

If I make this dress again, I might start by printing out a smaller size, to compare to my altered pattern. I would probably chose a woven fabric with a bit more body to see if the cocoon shape works better that way... I really love this version, which is almost more of a tunic and the silk fabric is so luxurious! if I had the guarantee it would look as good on me as it does on Charlie I would make it again in an instant...

Since the fabric is more on the sweater-weight side, this dress is actually too warm for the dead of summer, but it's the perfect transition piece for the beginning of fall - as you can see the photos were taken with fall well underway and leaves covering the street, such a beautiful time of year...until rain started pouring down :)