Frock by Friday: Friday

Finally done. I wanted to post this early but I've been so busy working on this and the photos. I can't wait to see what you've done with this dress.

As you can see I used a buttercream yellow material for the skirt. For the top I used a simple white poplin fabric and embellished it with navy bias tape and a blue and white rope twine.
I also used tiny brown and tan hued buttons.

I REALLY like this dress. It's interesting. And it's comfortable. But if I had to make it over again I would have used a floppy but sturdy fabric like garbadine. The poplin and cotton is very stiff and wrinkles easily.

Remember to post your finished frock to Grosgrain Flickr. I'll post your finished dress for Grosgrain readers to admire. See final Friday instructions below. And please follow Grosgrain for posts that don't show up on the front page.

And if you liked this Frock by Friday please Stumble It:

1. Pin the wrong side of the bodice to the right side of the skirt matching the center of the bodice to the center of the skirt. Sew it to the skirt by "stitching in the ditch" of the peplum and bodice seam. Be sure that you pin the skirt above the peplum seam.

2.  Ok, now here's a very sticky wicket. With my pieces, the skirt is wider than the blouse. Whatever you do, DON'T cut the skirt to make it even with the blouse. You will end up with a mess. This can happen when you are piecing together two separate patterns. Here's what I did. First I marked on the back of the dress where it started to get too tight, which was about the middle.

3.  Then I added a piece of fabric the width of the extra skirt piece and as long as from the bottom of the bodice to where I made the mark on the blouse in step 2. Iron well. The flatter it looks the better.

4. Then I cut that piece from where it met the skirt to the mark I made in step 2 so that it was one long line without any corners.

 

5. Then I sewed the new piece to the skirt at the seam, right sides together.

Now if you do this dress again, you'll know to add that tiny piece to the back of the bodice pattern BEFORE you cut out the pattern to avoid steps 2-5. If you redo the dress in a different style, I'd also lengthen the peplum by an inch on both sides.

6. I also sewed the pleats in the back of the skirt into darts because they looked really weird as pleats. To do this just sew starting from the end of the pleat line and taper down to the fold.

7. I sewed in the invisible zipper to the dress. If you would like an invisible zipper tutorial try this one. If you think the zipper won't be long enough what you can do is start sewing the zipper further down and use a hook and eye for the top of the back of the dress.

8.  Then sew up the bottom of the back of the skirt from the hem to the last stitch of the zipper.

DONE! Give yourself a pat on the back because this wasn't an easy one.

As you can probably see I embellished a little by adding bias tape trim accents as well as a little twisty rope detail. 

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I will try to address them.

And the new FBF button is below. Feel free to link to the Frock by Friday to get more fun people involved! To grab the button just highlight it, copy and paste into a new post or sidebar.