Simplicity 3673: It’s red, what more can I say?

It’s stunning. And apparently, so I have been told repeatedly whenever I wear this, red looks fantastic on me.

Hmmm. Looking at these photos, it looks a bit loose. I might check that out next time I wear it. It wouldn’t be much to take in the side seams a bit. And oh look! My new shoes. Naots, baby! My feet absolutely love them, even if my social conscience isn’t so sure about them (It’s an Isreali company with a factory in the settlers area of Palestine).

• Pattern: 

• Inspiration:

I’ve been having the time of my life on Pinterest. I don’t know about other people but I tend to have a few different distinct styles of clothing I really like, and Pinterest has been a great way of exploring this. One such style I called “Leafy Green” ended up with a whole lot more red than green, with pin after pin of plain red dresses in a variety of vintage styles.

But wait, I had 3m of red cotten/lycra satteen in my stash. And the above retro-repro pattern!

So I just put them together and love the outcome!

• Fabric/notions/trim used:

Cotton/lycra satteen which because of the stretchy nature of it, needed no zip.

Thread.

• Construction notes:

I hadn’t used this red satteen before because I bought it to make a proper dress version of the Sense and Sensibility1940’s swing era dress pattern I muslined in a very wearable way. (oh LOL!!! I just realised the title for that post is the 1490’s swing era dress. I’m dyslexic. Honest! And it is worst with numbers. Honest! I think I’d better go change it … :-D) uh, were was I? Ok the swing era dress in red satteen never happened coz the fabric is fairly heavy compared to the usual stuff I wear, and I was worried it might be just too hot. But I made another dress out of some gorgeous soft sagey green satteen (not blogged yet) thinking “If it’s too bad it can be a dry-season-only dress (the dry season is what masquerades as a Winter in Darwin). It turned out to be fine, not too hot at all! So I was confident about using the red satteen for this dress.

As noted, no zip needed. I did the tie-thingy on the neckline because I like tie-thingies on necklines. I did my usual FBA combined with taking miles out between bust and waist because I’m not miles tall. Other people who’ve blogged about this pattern mentioned it ran big, so I measured carefully, but I think it might need to be taken in a bit more, based on those piccies above. Stretch-wovens can be quite hard to get a satisfactory fit due to the stretch, I’ve found.

I did a machine-blind hem on this and I feel very fancy for it. Usually I just sew the hem with straight stitch. Sacrilegious I know, but look how many RTW clothes have a straight stitched hem. And besides, it’s a strong finish and clothes get washed to hell and back here (tropical climates *sigh*). However I figured if the blind hem stitch came apart from washing, I could just redo it. And it does look very nice…

• Cost

Hey, I bought the red satteen so long ago I can’t remember what it cost. Does that mean it’s free???

Oh ok, the satteen available in Spotlight at the moment is around $10 on special (They always have specials at Spotlight. NEVER buy anything full-price there, that’s my shopping advice.) So 3m @ $10 – $30

A reel of thread @ $3

Pattern: that must be free too, coz I can’t remember what I spent on it. Maybe $10? I do know I got it from Spotlight on sale…

Total $43-ish

• Final word:

Eeeeek! Such a great dress and soooo easy to fit to my hourglass figure. (I totally LOVE vintagey patterns for that reason.) I have some lovely lovely blue roses satteen fabric I’m seriously considering doing in the straight style -or do I want to use the skirt part of the straight dress and turn it into a high-waisted blue rose dress? Decisions, decisions…

Oh, and apparently, red really suits me 😀