French crepe Anna dress

This dress was a true labour of love, to borrow from House of Pinheiro's IG theme.

I took my time cutting out the fabric as it was pretty stretchy and liked to move around. I initially tried carbon paper and gave up, going straight to my rotary cutters. I had printed out the pdf pattern so I wasn't feeling precious about cutting the pattern pieces. I cut an 8 on the shoulders and bust, grading to 10 for waist and hips.

I got stuck in with my standard sewing foot and straight stitch settings and the bodice came together really quickly. I used Prym wonder tape on the sleeves which made hemming them much simpler and neater. I'm hoping washing will disolve the tape and reduce the sleeve flicks. I also finished the seam allowances with a 3 step zigzag stitch.

The problem came when I started sewing the skirt. I sewed the entire thing, plus the seam allowances then realised the stitches were badly puckering the fabric, giving an overall tulip shape as each seam curved inwards as it travelled near the hem.

I ended up unpicking the entire thing, then reseting the seams over & over until I eventually had a skirt than fell straight down rather than curving in. For that I used a walking foot, reduced my stitch length and used a narrow one step zig zag stitch with top thread tension of 3, a slowly rewound bobbin with reduced tension and a pressure foot set to 2 instead of 6!

The 22 inch zip went in okay first time, I basted it into the dress first as it was moving around despite being full of pins. I sewed the centre back seam an inch above the bottom of the zip which looked much neater & I don't need the full zip length anyway.

I have a semi-intentional high-low seam as the panels moved during cutting plus the bodice likes to slip backwards on my shoulders so the back hem is lower. It's a bit annoying but I'm done with this dress now! I hemmed neatly using my 1/4 inch foot however the insides are a mess as my pinking shears couldn't cope with the stretch of the fabric and barely cut it. Most of my seam allowances in the skirt are unfinished as zigzag makes it pucker. 

So in summary,  a badly made but lovely dress!