Pattern -
Cadence Maxi Dress from Love Notions
Fabric -
Christine, mint from l'oiseau fabrics
Skill - coverstitching corners
Getting a coverstitch machine really revolutionized my sewing! My Baby Lock coverstitch machine gives me a professional looking finish to the garments I sew. Topstitching is achieved without the stretching of fabric that my sewing machine would result in.
There is a bit of a learning curve to coverstitching. How you finish off a line of stitching is the most important part if you don't want your hard work unravelling! Then there's the practice involved in getting just the right distance from neckbands! It's all a learning process.
The most difficult bit for me was wrapping my head around how to coverstitch a corner. The pinned post created by Hilde Eekels-Beerens from the Coverstitch Facebook group was incredibly helpful!
My daughter wanted me to make her a
Cadence Maxi Dress - a new pattern from Love Notions. And she wanted it from a lovely viscose fabric - Christine from l'oiseau fabrics which was 95% viscose and 5% elastic. The Cadence is a pattern designed for woven fabrics, but can be made from knits. Generally, if you're making it from knits, you size down, but since my daughter wanted it for a loose summer dress, I didn't bother. The Cadence Maxi Dress has a split up each side and since I was going to use my BLCS2, I needed to practice first.
I started with a double layer of scrap fabric from the project - it's important that you are practicing in the same conditions as you will be doing your final sewing.
I stitched down to the turning point. I lifted the presser foot to release the tension and gently maneuvered the fabric to loosen off the threads and turn the fabric so that my needles were right above the outside stitching line.
I dropped the needles on the stitching line and gently pulled back the needle threads past the tension discs to reduce loops on the back. Then dropped the presser foot and stitched to the next corner.
When I was finished practicing, I had nice sharp corners and I was ready to coverstitch the real thing!
The side seam splits needed to be marked - I needed to know exactly where to make my turnings and for this I moved to the ironing board with my quilting ruler under the side seam to make pinning easier. The hem and side vents were already pressed in place. I marked the turning spots with pins so that I would be able to have consistent turning points on both splits.
I started at the back seam and stitched to the first corner - my marking pin showed me exactly where to turn. Using the marking pins, I was able to quickly coverstitch the entire hem in pretty short time. I hand-wheeled as I got to each marking pin and again at the end just to make sure that my stitching was as exact as I could get it.
And when I finished - not because it needed it, but because I'm a little OCD about it - I dabbed each corner and the final threads with Fray Stop. I know my stitching won't come undone, but if I go the extra step, I'm absolutely sure! You can trim the excess fabric if you wish, but I didn't bother.
The resulting hem is as good as this imperfect person can get it!
Now, as this was a knit project using a woven pattern, there were a few things I did differently from the pattern. I didn't use the facing pieces from the pattern for this sleeveless dress.
Instead, I did narrow bands on the armscyes - 1.5" which were folded in half width-wise. I did a clean facing on the neck - the same narrow bands, but turned to the inside and topstitched. My daughter didn't want facings and I felt that the combination of serged seams and topstitching would provide a little strength - the maxi length in this fabric exerts quite a pull! Next time, I'd probably just do exposed bands for both. Because of the stretchiness of the fabric I hung it overnight to let it relax to its full length. I had to take off 4" from the bottom to get the ankle-length hemline I was looking for.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results. The Cadence is such a simple pattern that even with all the thought-time I spent, plus adjusting the pattern to move the darts up 1.5" it probably only took me 3 hours start to finish. And done in this lovely European fabric from l'oiseau fabrics, it's one pretty nice dress!
