More dress progress

This dress has certainly come together quickly, I haven't even had much time to work on it this week and yet I think it will still be finished by the end of the weekend, which means it'll have taken me a week and so far I've probably only spent a few hours on it in total. I suppose this is why it's considered 'very easy'!

Yesterday I managed to have some issues with the thread getting caught in the bobbin holder which meant I had to take apart the whole bobbin area in order to get it out and then try and put it back together again. Afterwards it was rattling and I couldn't work out why but today I realised that I hadn't clipped it all back in properly so problem solved! So now I've managed to attach and finish the sleeves and do the yoke (after managing to confuse myself about how it actually attached to the dress), so now I just need to go and buy the elusive zipper foot so I can sew the zip on, then just the facing and the hem to do!

I love it when a garment starts coming together and the end is in sight, here's a pic of it thus far:

   

Also, over 200 visitors and no followers :-( Clearly I need to become a better writer, or sewer... or both!

Finally some sewing time! :-)

I've actually been quite busy since I've been back at university, which is unheard of for me! But it actually hasn't been too bad so far. I've been so busy that I've been pinning and basting when I have a spare moment (for example, today on the bus on the way to my weekly placement I was basting the sleeves!) and I've been dying to get on my sewing machine to actually get some stitching done. This evening I finally got to play, hooray! I did feel slightly sorry for the poor chinese girl in the room next to me though, but she does have her TV up really loud all the time (especially when I'm trying to sleep) so I'll think of this as payback!

So this evening I've stitched the front to the back and finished the edges (this fabric frays like crazy, it's the first time I've had to make a conscious effort to finish my edges!), then I did the overarm and underarm seams on the sleeves and finished the edges, then finished the edges of the bottom of the sleeve and sewed the seam.

Fabric heaven!

Finally I found an Aladdin's cave of fabric, situated about 30 minutes away, it turns out to be a retailer of one of the websites I've been looking at, fabricland.co.uk. They had a whole shop of dressmaking fabrics, not a curtain in sight, and it was all extremely good value! My mum and I both got extremely excited when we walked in and realised how much fabric was on offer, in fact there was so much choice that I was struggling to decide what I wanted to buy!

In the end I came out with three easy patterns to try, Butterick B4957, Butterick B5305 and McCall's M6011. I also went for two different fabrics, this one which will be great for a spring/summer dress:

And a lovely dark pink and black tiny houndstooth print suiting fabric. Both came in at around £3 or £4 a metre but are really nice quality and I can't wait to use them! The prices were much more suitable to my student budget compared to the £15 a metre I was seeing in John Lewis.

I have also caught wind of a fashion fabric shop in my university town which I'll be sure to check out when I go back.