summer sewing: red Kielo and bonus Wanted hack

I don't think the internet needs any more Kielo posts, but hey:

Meet the new Kielo, same as the old Kielo. Actually that's not true; making a pattern a few times allows one to refine things and this is the best finish I've achieved on this dress. When I made my first one I put neck and armbands in with extreme incompetence and ended up folding them underneath and topstitching them down with yet more incompetence. My second Kielo was finished by turning and stitching, and it's kind of OK for that one because the jersey isn't that stretchy. This jersey (another Rolls and Rems purchase), however, is extremely stretchy and wouldn't have lasted five minutes with a turned-under neck hem, so with some trepidation I decided to try bands again. It turns out my sewing is much better now, so the bands went in nicely, laid flat and were as simple and unobtrusive as you could wish for. It's funny how unaware you can be of your own progress. 

I also experimented with using water-soluble tape in the hem to get nicer twin needle stitching. It's definitely a huge improvement and something I'll be doing all the time with awkward fabrics from now on, but it's still not as nice as I'd like and I think I'm going to have to start experimenting with tension settings more. Ugh. 

The one issue I have with this version is that in person, the fabric is kind of see-through. It didn't look see-through when I was checking the fabric, but made up into a garment and on my body, it is very possible to tell what colour my underwear is. It's easily fixable by wearing a vest top and bike shorts underneath (although not right now because it is 32 bollocking degrees and extra clothing is deeply uncomfortable and WE ARE NOT SET UP FOR THIS there is no aircon in this country and we're all dying), but I didn't realise that when I took the photos. It hasn't photographed too badly from the front, but let's just say there's a reason I haven't posted a back view of this one. 

I also have another jersey maxi dress to share, and it may well be the last one of the summer. I'd planned to make a Butterick 5181 woven maxi, but I finished my toile this weekend and I hate it. The back is too low, the skirt is too bulky, and the waist is just weird. I still want my fancy black viscose to become something, but it won't be that. (I now have a couple of toiles that look horrendous on me and I'm considering putting them into one "fail post" so that the information is out there but I don't have to spend too much time looking at terrible pictures of myself.)

Anyway:

This is another Vanessa Pouzet Wanted top hacked into a maxi. When I made my first one back in May I loved it and had immediate plans to make a second... except none of my fabric was right for it and I didn't want to make a "maybe" dress. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to Walthamstow looking for toile fabric and this was just sitting there. Perfect maxi fabric that also happened to be in my summer colours. Win!

Originally I thought I would make the top in horizontal stripes and the skirt in vertical stripes, but after making the top part (which I had to do twice because I hadn't fully anticipated how much more annoying these stripes would be to match than regular stripes) I did some experimenting and realised it didn't look quite right. I think the variation in stripe width and unequal amounts of colour made it look unbalanced. So I just did the whole thing horizontally, which looks better but was way more annoying because I had to match these stripes all the way round. In most cases I'm not overly concerned about pattern matching, but I HATE when stripes are off. 

My first version of this dress has stretched out quite a bit at the neck from heavy use, so I made the back neckband a little smaller on this version. I also haven't elasticated the waist (just gathered the skirt fabric), though I still might go back in and do that depending on how its first week in my wardrobe goes. 

I'm super pleased with this dress. The fabric is somehow classically summery without having any of the traditional summer prints or colours, and the dress is a statement piece while also being super-casual and comfortable. With these two done I now have six maxi dresses I love, which I'm pretty sure will be enough to get me through the summer. I'm not saying I'm definitely done, just that if I don't get any more fabric/pattern inspiration, I'll probably be fine.

Up next: the jacket, hopefully? Maybe better not to plan for that during a week where the heatwave is having a heatwave...