Vogue 1395: The Meat Dinner Dress

Every year, Michael's family has two fancy-pants dinners together where we all go to a nice restaurant and eat (way too much), drink and be merry. They are generally scheduled around birthdays - one in April, one in October. The one this October was last night at San Telmo, an Argentinian restaurant here in Melbourne. It was a meat-fest and I woke up craving some crisp greens and tomatoes. Michael suggested we have lamb chops for dinner tonight and is still laughing at the filthy look I gave him. I like meat (love a good quality rare steak), but not to that extent - I have reduced my intake of red meat drastically in the last year and feel much healthier for it.

Anyway, I decided to make a dress to wear - I'm a bit sick of the good old sack at the moment, and feel like some waist definition. I decided I would sew a new pattern - one of the Rebecca Taylor for Vogue ones - V1395.

This is a fairly basic dress made less basic by the addition of a back overlay that extends into the ties at the waist. I was intrigued after seeing Morgan's Bee Version. Morgan is one of my favourite bloggers. I decided to use my rather precious length of rayon from Darn Cheap Fabrics that I bought after Jenny made this top out of it. The fabric is lush, but was horrible to sew for this dress. Narrow hems and slinky rayon were not made for each other and I had to unpick a lot. Luckily I made this when Little M was out, as she would now have a lot of very choice swear words in her vocabulary too. This is what I ended up with:

I made some adjustments after a muslin. I had to take 3.5cm out of each shoulder seam, beginning at the neck edge. I then added 3cm to the length of the bodice, and 5cm to the skirt length.

In these photos, the neckline looks way too high, and I admit for the first two hours I wore it, it annoyed the living daylights out of me. Magically though, after those 2 hours, it somehow settled in place and sits about 2cm lower - which is where I wanted it. I wonder what happened? So weird.

My wings. That is the back overlay being extended out, which you then tie in front (obviously). I found I had to cinch it in pretty firmly, otherwise I looked a little pregnant (which I'm not).

That's a pretty awesome tan line happening there!! I accidentally got burnt at Phillip Island last weekend. I am usually so anal about being sunsmart. 

While I didn't completely enjoy making this dress, I really enjoyed sewing something different and something that wasn't a sack. I'm not ruling out future sacks, but I don't reach for them as I used to. Maybe when summer properly hits I will.

I'm currently making a dress to wear to my sister's professional ball in two weeks. I have barely started - I have no sewjo!!! What are you sewing?