Another one of the dresses that I've made in the past few months is the Sew Over It Betty. Betty has a fitted bodice, full circle skirt and is sleeveless, making her the perfect party dress. I first made this lovely purple polka-dot version in cotton bought at Fabworks to wear at a friend's wedding and despite the blustery day I managed to avoid flashing my underwear (circle skirt issues!).
As per usual I had to make adjustments to the length, adding 5cm to the bodice so the waist fell in the right place and then another 5cm to the skirt length so it didn't finish half way up my pasty thighs. Adding to the skirt brought up a few cutting issues with it being a circle as it no longer fits on the fabric easily if you add even a little bit of length and it can easily get quite wasteful. A bit of creative pattern piecing got me there though! I placed the skirt on first, cut it out and then refolded the remaining fabric to cut the rest out, being careful to stay on the grain still. Although I was happy with the dress as it pulls me in at the waist and covers up both my bigger thighs (damn you running!) and mummy tummy area, I found that there was some pulling over my boobs and it was baggy on my high chest. FBA definitely needed even though I technically only need to add 2".
The second version I made was for a charity casino night and I had every intention of buying a RTW dress for this as it fell smack bang in the middle of packing for the house move (as well as finding primary schools for the kids, applying for high school for the eldest, starting the Christmas shopping and finding a house to rent...). But of course I couldn't find a dress that was long enough, fitted across my chest and hips properly and didn't cost an arm and a leg. So with 24 hours to go I bought some lovely and very slippery black satin and set about making Betty number 2. I was still hemming the never ending hem that is the circle skirt with 30 minutes before I had to leave...
Needless to say the hem is a little messy but enough that you can't tell unless you're looking closely! I'm not happy with the zip insertion as it was moving about and I was rushing it so I've an area that is slightly baggy where it shouldn't be. I've decided that rather than correct it, its going to become a circle skirt as I've enough material in the bodice to make a waistband and enough length that I can slice off the dodgy hemline without having to unpick it all and resew it properly. The FBA prevented the pulling on the boobage area and bagging across the neckline at least. Here's (woah) black Betty (bam-a-lam).
