If there wasn’t a Sew Weekly Challenge and I wasn’t a contributor, this dress would most likely have ended up as an unfinished project. It was a dress I had wanted to sew and wear for my cousin’s wedding last Saturday. That however didn’t materialize and what you are seeing in the gallery below is the tweaked version. See the original yucky version and find out why this dress is late on my TSW post.
The Gallery
I used a bronze/silvery satin fabric with embroidered scallop edge for the dress. Boy, oh boy, I think satin is really quite a difficult fabric to work with and I really had to handle the delicate fabric with care at all stages- ironing, cutting, sewing and unpicking. It’s really horrors of horrors to unpick and I had to do so much of that to make the dress work.
I have a love-hate relationship with this fabric. On one hand, I didn’t enjoy working the fabric and I think the sheen makes the wearer put on a couple of pounds. But then again, it is the same sheen of the fabric that really brought out the smocking details in a subtle way that is quite lovely. I have not tried smocking before this but after seeing the very talented Jali’s (Equator Collection) stunning smocked cushions, I was so in awe and absolutely inspired to use the method on garments. See her posts here, here, here and here. I even contacted her smocking instructress but alas, she only has weekend classes (weekday ones were cancelled) which I am not able to attend. My version is really amateurish compared to Jali’s and I’m glad to have tried it 🙂
I’m also clueless what kind of smocking this is since there are so many different stitching methodologies.
The sleeves and the hem patterns were cut on the scallop edge and I love how they turned out.
The Pattern Review
Since I couldn’t attend the smocking classes, I bought myself a vintage dress pattern-Simplicity 4826- with smocking details. The pattern came with simple instructions on how to smock the bodice of the dress. I was surprised that it was actually much easier than I had envisioned.
There was also an iron on dots transfer paper and I was shocked that it still worked after 50 years! However, due to the long periods of time, there were a few extra dots that transfered from other part of the paper onto itself. The original pattern had 6 rolls of smocking excluding the neckline and area adjacent to the sleeves. When I was done smocking I realized I had 7 rolls on one side of the bodice so I stitched 5 additional smocks to balance it out. The instructions and diagrams were very easy to follow and I really enjoyed the smocking process even though it was time consuming. It was strangely therapeutic!
The Simplicity pattern was an easy 3 piece (excluding facings) pattern with an optional tie belt. I love the smocking details but thought the skirt portion would not be formal enough for the wedding luncheon so I used the skirt pattern from McCall’s 4883. Initially, I used view A despite my intuition asking me to go with B. All because I wanted to make full use of all 3 meters of the fabric I had. Silly me. That resulted in yes, the yucky ‘before’ version. The midriff and skirt sections were really easy to put together and I didn’t have to follow the instructions. The midriff section was however too long so I’ll recommend trying out the length first and if necessary shorten it before sewing. 
I’m exhausted after working on and tweaking this dress to make it work. Think I need a vacation! I don’t know how Mena from The Sew Weekly did it but she sewed 8 dresses in 6 days! If you have not, check out her Seven in Seven challenge! She’s amazing!
The Sew Convert 