Bees Knees Art Dolls: EvaDress Competition 2014 Entry

Morning internet Lovelies

Today is all about my entry for the EvaDress 2014 sewing competition. Details can be found here,

http://evadress.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/2014-evadress-pattern-contest-details.html

but I'm afraid it is a little late now if you didn't know and were interested in entering, the closing date is tomorrow. And I am just in time, this blog finds me coming straight from the sewing machine where I was just finishing the hem, then a few quick photos and time to post them off.

I have used a few of EvaDress's patterns in the past and they have come up in blog posts too;
the pink and black hat (http://honeypotcreation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/hsf-14-challenge-3-pink.html)
the fall for cotton challenge (http://honeypotcreation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fall-for-cotton-and-were-finished.html), remember the cream blouse.

I like them and the way they turn out, and this one was no exception. I must admit to a slight panic at the start as my pattern was very late arriving, but the lovely Xandra at EvaDress offers great customer service.

I did a muslin, for me that is quite something, but I wanted this to work well and it is the quickest way to iron out any bugs in resizing a pattern. This particular pattern had the right size shoulders, but everything else needed to expand.

I also made it a little harder on myself in that the material is stretchy crushed velvet, a fairly cheap choice ( I needed to do this on a budget), that is rather tricky to sew neatly, but if sewn well still looks as lovely as more expensive velvet.

You see the main problem is that the cut edge rolls inwards, making it hard to line the seams up and even harder to get a flat non-bulky seam once sewn. So I decided to use a flat-felled seam technique on each one. Well that took some time I can tell you, especially when you think there are 12 gores on the skirt.

But I think the end result is worth it. Hard to see I know but trust me it worked.

My next challenge in the time factor was I decided to decorate the dress with tatting, (I'm so into the tatting again at the moment), a nice cream to contrast the blue.