Vogue 1287 - Part 2

I've just come home from a day out shopping debuting my new dress!

It turned out to be much easier to make than I expected, it has just taken a while as we are moving house soon so there has been a lot of packing up to be done.  I'm really glad that I took the time to reduce the size of the bodice as the fit is really good.

I rarely sew with stretchy fabric, but I really enjoyed making this - the fabric is really soft and was easy to work with.  It's like t-shirt fabric, quite lightweight, which was a good job as at times I was sewing through at least 8 layers of it (I'm not sure I should have been but that's how it seemed to work out).  I forced myself to take my time with this dress but I gave up trying to transfer all the markings to the fabric and just used pins to mark the circles.  I did do all the tacking even though I hate hand sewing and this helped the pleats stay in place I think.

It was also really easy to match the bodice, waist band and skirt even though the bodice is a 4, the waist a 10 and the skirt a 12.  I'm still not convinced about the sizing on this pattern, I had to shorten the elastic in the back quite a bit to get the fit right.
The best thing about this dress is the cost, normally home sewing doesn't work out especially cheaply for me - its more about getting a unique, well-fitting garment - but this was a bargain!  I bought the pattern as part of a buy one get two free so it cost me £4.92; the fabric cost me £6.33 off of ebay and thread and elastic came to about £1.50.  Grand total £12.75.