Ahhh…completed Easter dress

It’s always a nice feeling to have a finished project.  The completion of this one is particularly satisfying for me, as I have wanted to make Judith Dobson’s Tea Dress for 22 years!  That’s a long time to wait, though I was hardly idle as the years passed.

When this dress appeared on the back cover of the Jan. 1989 issue of Sew Beautiful magazine, I knew that someday I would have the pleasure of making it. My daughter was already too old for the pattern, so I’ve waited for the sweet blessing of  a granddaughter.

“Someday” is now and it will be 6 year-old Laurel’s Easter dress. Now I am so eager to see it with the blue slip which is almost finished.

The dress is finished but I am still thinking about it, evaluating the finished product, the pattern, the choices I made with regard to notions, embroidery designs, thread fibers and colors,  etc.  Do you do this?

The champagne colored lace, matching entredeux and pinstitching is a choice that I knew would cause no regrets.  I love the combination of white and ivory.  The 80 wt. Madeira Cotona thread used for the wing needle pinstitch blends nicely with the champagne color.   The ecru mother-of-pearl buttons seem to accent the contrast of white and champagne.

Even as I move on to the slip, the voice of experience is telling me how this could have been better. What was going through my mind when I picked up 30 wt. thread for the buttonholes?  They are better suited to a Harley-Davidson leather jacket.

Then I wonder if the back isn’t overdone.  Perhaps it would have been better to have skipped the embroidery between the buttonholes.  Oh well.  It’s done now.

Another problem with the back is my lack of attention to the pattern details.  The lace placement line clearly curves down and then angles toward center back, parallel to the hem.  I rounded it, ignoring the reason for this angle.  As a result, the lace at center back doesn’t meet as it should, since each side is still on a downward curve when they overlap.

Additionally, I didn’t notice that the lace on the left side had stretched and ends up wider than the lace it meets.  Grrrrrr……maybe I shouldn’t be listening to my Pandora music radio when I  am sewing.

One feature that really pleased me was the placket.  If you have never tried Debbie Glenn’s “Painless Placket,” I highly recommend it.  Continuous lap plackets are annoying, more time consuming and much bulkier than Debbie’s. Her directions and the article which appeared in Sew Beautiful magazine can be downloaded here.

This chunky bumble bee was my constant companion as I photographed the dress. The jasmine is buzzing with the rest of his family.

The directions are printed out and kept in a page protector in my sewing room for easy reference.  After stitching  a few absolutely painless plackets, the instructions are no longer necessary.

When I saw the Heirloom Tea Dress pattern for sale from Martha Pullen, I felt smug knowing I had the free version in my treasured collection of Sew Beautiful mags.  It’s nice to save $12 but there is a lot to be said for what I assume is a new and improved set of directions.  For instance, I wish I had had the newer pattern when it was time to cut out the skirt.  There is no measurement for the width, which clearly is less than a 45″ width.  I had to extract that information from the directions for the puffing band, which was to be finished at 72 1/2″.

This was not a huge inconvenience, but then I discovered that the template for the flip flop lace was not included.  It’s likely that it was accidentally omitted and appeared in the next issue.  Rather than go into the stacks of my old issues, boxed up in the garage, I drafted my own.  That took some time that I wish I had back.

I’m off to finish the slip and do some planning for the boys’ outfits.  So am I the only one sewing Easter outfits?  I’d love to hear about what you are doing.