Self Drafted Sheath - Wearable Muslin

Update:

My self drafted sheath had one really buggy thing about it - there seemed to be a pouch under the tummy area. All I could think of was to lengthen the darts but really, contour darts nearly to the hem?? After consulting the fitting gurus at Pattern Review, the general consensus was that sometimes that's what you've got to do.


Well, I ended up making the darts about 3 inches longer and also taking them in (both front and back) which has given me more definition in the waist and removed that pouch under my tummy - excellent! (No pic yet)

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So, this dress started life as a single bed quilt cover. There it is on our lounge room floor, waiting to be cut up. 

The muslin was drafted over a period of several months, actually, it was drafted quickly ....... the fitting was a completely different story. I drafted it, made it up in calico and it was like a great big sack - ridiculous amounts of ease Winifred Aldrich! This is meant to be a 'close fitting' dress! So then began the long journey of fitting. I'd work on improving it for hours and hours, then give up and put it away for ages. A week/month later, out it would come again, it'd get some more improvements until frustration got the better of me (and it). At one point I found that I actually had a sheath dress pattern in my stash, I thought I'd give it a go ........... bad, bad move. It was worse than what I'd started with! I promptly tossed that and decided to stick with what I had.

Finally, this is what I've got. For some reason there's a diagonal drag line across the top chest in the photos - after seeing that, I checked the mirror, nope, not there - clearly I was standing strangely. There still seems to be too much room over the stomach area, maybe if I lengthen the darts it will improve it. One thing that didn't make sense to me was, as drafted, the front hip width was wider than the back hip width - this seems backwards to me, I know I stick out way more at the back! I think I ended up taking some width from the front but there's still a bit of pouching going on.

This was my first time using bias binding - I wanted to have at least 1cm of trim showing, so I used the wide binding. Unfortunately, I didn't think I'd be able to cajole that wide binding into a keyhole opening as I had planned. I thought about cutting it in half and reironing it so that the keyhole only had narrow binding but I thought that might look a bit stupid and to be honest, my patience was wearing thin, so bye bye keyhole, I'll see you in another piece of clothing.

Centre back zip (I've never done any other kind of zip - but I plan to), hook & eye closure (wouldn't you know it, I did two stitches and realised I had the hook on backwards!! It's still backwards :-\ )back vent, centre front & back darts, horizontal bust darts.

It's a very easy dress to wear, no problems sitting or running and, as this is cotton, it's really light and feels like you're wearing air - perfect for our summers. It's an 'around the house' dress at the moment.

So, there you go - what is the deal with that front part??

$10 quilt cover (still a lot left - machine covers?), $1.58 bias, hook & eye set
From the stash: zipper that had been pulled out of something else (probably from my Mother's stash and older than I am), thread