It’s been a little bit, but I posted about the bodycon dress that I am attempting to make for my friend, Jamie.

When I last posted about this dress I was at the point where I needed to grade from one size down to another.

I decided that I was going to attempt to fit the pattern to Addie and pin out the extra that way. Luckily Jay came along and helped me, so that when I was finished this is what I had:

If you look closely you can see that I have pins in this. They marked where the seam would actually end up if I sewed the dress together.

What I did, with Jay’s help, was to hold the pinned pattern on Addie as if she was wearing it. Using a pencil I then traced the shape between the two points where the pattern would need to be graded between sizes. I included the seam allowance and drew the line that I would need to cut against in order to get the right shape.

The result is the blue line in the picture up above.

I transferred this line to the other part of the pattern so that the line was the exact same for the front and the back.

Then I cut away the extra. That was all the adjusting I was going to do to the pattern. Next I would need to cut the pieces out of the fabric.

This picture is fuzzy, but it shows you the front and back pieces. Fairly easy, right? You just sew them together at the shoulders and sides. I decided to do a sleeveless version of this dress. Then I realized that it’s very difficult to tell the right side from the wrong side of this fabric. So I picked a wrong side and marked it.

The knotted side of the thread is the wrong side.

I used a basting stitch to sew it together in case I needed to remove it for any adjustments. But I had been so careful that there shouldn’t be many adjustments to be made, right?

To say that I was disappointed would be a huge understatement. As you can see, this is WAY too baggy almost every where. *sigh*

The only part that seems to fit like I wanted is the hip area. Otherwise, there’s just too much fabric all over.

And after seeing this, I’m not sure that I needed to add the 2″ of length.

I could have posted this after I had figured out where I went wrong and fixed it, but I want to be up front and real with you guys. This first attempt, as good of a try as it was, really sucked. So much that I wanted to just throw the whole thing in a pile, pout, and tell Jamie that a bodycon dress is way out of the question. Yet, that’s not how we learn, is it? Before you get something right you need to fail a LOT so that you learn all of the ways not to do something.

So was this really a fail? Maybe not. I learned how to do pattern grading one way. I learned that this process isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. And I also learned that I was terrified to make any adjustments to the dress until I knew for sure that Addie is very close to Jamie’s measurements. Luckily I received pictures from Jamie a few weeks ago so when I have some time I can compare them to Addie and figure out what parts might need tweaking. That will allow me to feel a little more confident that the adjustments I make on this dress will more likely help the fit on Jamie.

Also, it gave me an excuse to buy this pattern:

McCall’s #M7999

I feel that this dress is much closer to the type of bodycon dress that Jamie actually wants. I will need to lower the neckline a little, but I think this might be a better pattern to attempt. I’m still going to try adjusting the first one that I made, but I needed a back-up so that when I get irritated with one I can work on the other.

So that’s where I stand with this dress. Once Christmas is done and I have more time to work on projects that aren’t gifts, I will try to jump back into this dress with more gusto.