Thumbs down for scuba stripes

This dress was never meant to be. I know exactly what I like garment-wise, and a dress made from striped scuba fabric with a pleated skirt has never been on my sewing wish list. Yet here it is. All because I saw a dress on Instagram, became a tiny bit obsessed with it and couldn't rest until I'd made one for myself. The making of it was relatively easy and straight forward. Whether or not I actually like the finished dress is another matter...

The original inspiration dress in question was this lovely Emery dress by Caz.

Hers was made from a striped ponte from Minerva that was no longer in stock. What was in stock (but not at the moment) was a similar looking striped scuba knit on sale at £7.99 a metre, so I bagged two metres to experiment with.

One of the things I liked about Caz's dress was the way the bodice and skirt stripes ran in different directions. The stripes on my scuba aren't as uniform as the stripes on Caz's ponte - there are several different sections of broad, medium and narrow stripes - so I knew there'd be a bit of head scratching to get them in the exact position I wanted. I ended up with the medium stripes across the main section of the bodice and narrower stripes at the top section. Much to my delight, I then jammily managed to continue the narrow striped section down the side of the sleeves (more or less). The skirt is a mixture of everything, but it can get away with it because of the vertical stripes.

Matching arm stripes (sort of!)

Pattern-wise I used the bodice from the Lady Skater dress as it's drafted for knits and fits me well, and the pleated skirt from the Mortmain dress. The only change I made was to shorten the bodice slightly - the original length ended up too far down from my natural waist and was causing a bit of rippling. It would probably have gone unnoticed in a solid coloured fabric, but the giant stripes really emphasised it. The whole dress was sewn on my overlocker, apart from the sleeve hems which I finished with a straight stretch stitch. The neckline is finished with a plain white neckband. The skirt hem has been left unfinished as I just preferred the look of it.

One giant gamble I took when making this dress was to cut it out without allowing for a zip. The Lady Skater pattern doesn't have a zip anyway as it's designed for knits and I simply removed the zip seam allowance from the skirt pieces  Because the scuba has a good amount of stretch to it, I can get the dress on without one, so the gamble paid off, yay!

There are lots and lots of positives about this dress, along with one big, giant negative - I don't think it's very 'me'. Maybe it's a stripe too far (can there be such a thing?!) and I don't really wear this shape of dress any more. Also, despite being easy to sew with and magically stretchy, I've come to the conclusion (a bit late in the day, admittedly) that I don't particularly like scuba as a fabric. The texture always feels a bit cheap and nylon-y to me and I couldn't wait to get the dress off after taking these photos!

I debated whether to even post this dress on my blog, but I think it's always good to see dressmaking fails as well as wins. I don't regret making it and it was a lovely, stress-free dress to sew. Sometimes it's good to sew something just to get it out of your system! x