Painter’s Block Melissa

With the vintage jumpsuit completed, it’s officially the start of my two weeks of ‘dressmaking’. I started with the knit fabric I bought from one of my countless trips to Spotlight. It was love at first sight with this fabric and I didn’t even know if I was able to handle such a silky, stretchy fabric. Having completed this dress, I have to say it was quite an experience.  As I do not have a serger, I used a jersey needle with my very ordinary sewing machine, a normal foot, zig-zag stitches and a load full of blind guts and went ahead. I can’t recall what fabric this is specifically but cotton jersey it was not. It had a mind of its own and loved to sway from side to side when I tried my best to get it as straight as possible. The seam reaper definitely played a huge role in this project and I’m glad I baste whenever I was in doubt. I guess I will have to practice sewing knits more. So, here it is, my second knit project and what I am calling the Painter’s Block Melissa.

I have been eyeing Burdastyle’s Jenny dress for a long time but knew I had absolutely no occasion to wear it. Melissa, its evil twin, however, was another story. Somehow, knit just seemed more relax, more casual. I planned the fabric placement, hoping that the horizontal stripes and vertical stripes at different locations will help hide excesses where they should not exist and accentuate whatever I lacked.

Before starting on the project, I read reviews by talented seamstresses who had tried the Melissa sewing pattern. Most of them mentioned that it ran large so I cut a size 36 for top and skirt and size 38 for the high waist (I’m a size 38). It seemed to  have worked well for me and is now something I will definitely wear.

As a sewing pattern, I’ll consider the Melissa pretty easy to put together with the right fabric. I managed to finish it in a day despite using a less than easy fabric so this is a dress you can create within a short time frame and easy enough to figure out without much instructions. When I was trying to print the instructions, I realized it was meant for the skirt so I thought they didn’t include instructions for the dress which they actually did under the dress variation (here) but alas I had already completed most of the project. Sometimes, I just wished they could be put together in one place.

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