Overlocker |

Basically as soon as I finished my blue brushstrokes Ebony dressI ordered more scuba and made another one (though it’s only just making it to the blog)! I possibly love it even more, because of the amazing fabric and the fitting tweaks I made.

I bought the fabric from Sew Me Sunshine but they are sadly now out of stock – though I’m not surprised as it’s so nice. Fabric Godmother do still have it in stock, though, if you want to get your hands on some. I first saw the design as a cotton and was tempted to get some but wasn’t really sure what to make so I was thrilled when it became available as a scuba.

I made mostly the size 2 again, as with my first version, but I retraced the sleeves and armscyes in a size 6 as the sleeves were soooo tight in the size 2. I also again reduced the seam allowance to 0.5cm instead of 1cm to give myself even more room. The sleeves and shoulders definitely fit better on this version, though the other version is totally wearable. I also want to make the Ebony tee (probably in the cropped length) so I’ll probably make the same adjustment, though with a stretchier jersey it might not feel quite as restrictive – scuba has a relatively low amount of stretch, at least judging from the 2 I’ve used.

I still love the swingy shape of the Ebony – it is one of my favourite silhouettes out of everything I’ve made I think.

I sewed the dress on my sewing machine, with a zig zag stitch and then overlocked the seam allowances. I finished the hem and neckband with my trusty twin needle. I can’t quite get the tension right on my overlocker to feel like I’m happy sewing actual seams on it – also having had to unpick some overlocking before, I make too many mistakes to not stitch things first on my machine and then on the overlocker. Am I just being a wuss?

The only slight downside of this dress is that I recently changed jobs and am now working for a furnishing fabric company dispatching fabric (living the dream!) so I’m no longer based in an office and am lugging around bolts of fabric all day so I don’t know how much I’ll wear this. Though I’m tempted to wear it anyway, once the weather warms up a little – my workspace is really cold and I’m currently wearing 3 layers to work so this may not be warm enough until Spring finally arrives! I’ve realised I have lots of handmade dresses, so I can’t not wear any of them! Though I’m definitely going to focus on more casual basics and separates for the rest of the year.

After what turned out to be my wearble muslin of the Colette Moneta, I was persuaded by Sarah from Like Sew Amazing (who has a fab new vlog, the first episode of which is about all 6 of her Monetas and features yours truly!) to make another one when she invited me to her house for a irl Moneta Party. It was really fun to sew with someone else – it’s normally such a solitary pursuit, it was a novelty to do it with company!

I feel the main saving grace of this Moneta compared to the other, is the fabric. Eagle-eyed readers may recognise the fabric as the one I used for my Coco Dress. I used the pattern in a different way, centering the space between the diamonds instead of the diamonds themselves as I did for the Coco. I think it works better this way, which is good because to start with I was going to place the diamonds around the bodice in the same was as the Coco. And the diamonds pretty much line up on the side seams. Yay!

The fabric looks even more trippy and like a magic eye picture from the back!

The black fabric is some ponte I bought from my local sewing shop. I had thought they didn’t have that much of a range of dressmaking fabrics, but actually it’s pretty good when I looked closely and ignored the boxes of fat quarters! They have needlecord, lots of patterned cottons and a pretty good range of jerseys for a shop of that size. They also have everything you could possibly want in their massive range of haberdashery items.

I really like the ponte as it has a nice structure to it, making it a lot easier to sew with than the thin fabric from my last version! The jazzy fabric is quite thin, but not too difficult to manhandle for just a couple of seams! The only problem with this combination of fabrics is the skirt pulls down the bodice slightly because the jazzy fabric is much more stretchy.

I again cut out the straight size xs and this time didn’t need to make any fitting changes under the arms – I guess different jerseys behave in different ways. I also cut out the short sleeves instead of the longer ones because I didn’t think the 3/4 length sleeves would work in the black fabric. I did cut out the sleeves in both fabrics and asked Sarah’s opinion and she thought the black would look better – and she was totally right!

The main change I made, which I hadn’t initially planned, was to add a neckband.

I measured the neckline of the bodice – the front neck was 34.5cm and the back neck 31cm. Added together this comes to 65.5cm. I decided to take 4cm off this length, guessing that this would be enough smaller to sit flat but not so much smaller it puckered the neckline. I’m sure there is a science to this, but my guess was okay. I then added 2cm back on for the seam allowance to be able to sew the 2 ends together into a loop. I cut the band to be 5cm wide. After sewing the 2 ends together, I folded the band in half lengthways, wrong sides together and tacked it all the way around. I then lined up the 2 edges of the band with the neckline of the bodice, stretching it slightly to make it fit. I then stitched it with a 1cm seam allowance, flipped it to the inside and topstitched it with my twin needle.

If you follow me on instagram you’ll have seen that while at Sarah’s house I played with an overlocker for the first time. She had it all set up ready and it wasn’t as scary to use as I thought it would be – I feared the fabric would run away and cut itself in half before I knew what was happening! But it’s pretty much like a normal sewing machine, of course! Some of the insides (which I had time to do at Sarah’s) look lovely so I’m definitely a convert to overlockers, and I even got mine out the box for the first time, having bought it a couple of months ago! I managed to thread it but the stitches were all loopy and no matter how much I changed the tension, it didn’t fix it. Any ideas? Is it possible I did actually thread it wrong and it kind of works but not properly?

I’ll leave you with this outtake from my photos – this was me testing the camera set up, feeling really cold and wearing my glasses (which I took off for the photos!)