Curved yoke top & dress

I haven't been keeping up with posting my finished garments lately. I still need to take pictures of a dress I made a dress from a vintage pattern, and I've continued to work on Tim's shirt, more on those later this week...

A couple of months ago, Emma One Sock posted some Anna Sui trims that got me pretty excited. I had the idea of using one of these at the hem of a summer dress. Enter BWOF 7-2008-107.


The magazine also shows a shorter version of this pattern as a tunic-length top. I decided I'd make the top using stash fabric, then if I liked it I would make the dress with the special trim at the hem. And because this is March, I'd be able to enter the garments in the "One Pattern, Multiple Looks" contest on Pattern Review - perfect timing.




Fabric
Top: Linen/lycra from the stash, it has a very nice drape. When I first bought this fabric a couple years ago, I had the folded yardage sitting on a table near a window and it faded along the folds. I was able to work around the sun damage for this top.

Dress: 100% linen from Gorgeous Fabrics and Anna Sui trim from Emma One Sock. Before cutting, I washed and dried the linen a few times to soften it. Then I read somewhere that Dawn dishwashing liquid is great at softening linen, so I picked some up at the drugstore and soaked the yardage in the sink. What I didn't know is how sudsy Dawn is! I rinsed the fabric in several changes of clean water, but every time I squeezed the fabric, it let out suds. A lot of them. So I put the fabric in the rinse cycle in my washing machine. It still smells a teensy bit like Dawn.

Notes on construction/alterations
Front yoke - I was a little nervous about sewing the curvy seam, but it was much easier than I expected, thanks to a lot of pin basting. I used narrow (1/4") seam allowances on the curved seams. After wearing the top, I noticed that the neckline tended to dip down, so when I made the dress, I interfaced the front yoke with Pro Weft fusible interfacing from Sew Exciting.

Neckline finish - I finished the neckline of the blue top with a strip of bias fabric, turned to the inside and topstitched. However on the dress, I needed to hide the interfacing on the front yoke, so I stitched an extra front and back yoke together at the shoulder seams, sewed this to the dress at the neckline with right sides together, then turned the yoke unit to the inside. Burda tells you to topstitch to hold the yoke in place, but I stitched it in place by hand to avoid having topstitching.

Pockets - I included the in-seam pockets on the top, but I omitted them on the dress. I forgot that I don't care for this style of pocket. They just flop around inside your garment and add bulk at the hips. No thanks.

Center back - Most of the reviews of this garment on Pattern Review said that the center back zippers is unnecessary because the neckline is large enough to fit over your head, so I omitted the zip.


Trim - The trim was machine sewn to the hem with a single row of stitches. At a side seam, I overlapped the trim ends, handstitched the top layer to the bottom layer in matching thread, and cut away the excess trim. I was surprised at how nice it turned out, it's barely noticeable.



Conclusion
I think the top would look better if it was shorter. It's looking pretty "maternity". But I don't think I can hem it much shorter because then the pocket bags will show. The top looks quite billowy in some of the photos I took. I'm only showing the good ones :)

I'm really happy with how the dress turned out. I'm still trying to figure out what shoes to wear (which is why I cropped my feet out of the photos), nothing I have looks right. Sigh Guess I have some shoe shopping in my future. I can probably find something on 6pm.com.

I was planning to make another top with this pattern, if only to give more oomph to the "multiple looks" aspect of the PR contest, but I have a feeling I'm going to be tired of the curved yoke look with these 2 garments alone, so enough is enough and I'm done with this pattern.