A Floral & Striped Knit Dress

Here it is… my first(ish) knit dress, Vogue 8728.

I absolutely love this dress and it’s fabric oohh soo much.

I snagged this floral & stripe fabric from Emma One Sock a couple months ago for a pretty penny. I shudder to tell you that I spent $54 on this fabric… imported from Italy. Luckily, I am such a shortie and I didn’t need too much yardage – but still….It’s a lot of $$$. It’s a rayon/spandex blend fabric – very light weight but opaque so I don’t need a lining or slip with it.

As much as I wanted to sew up the Vogue 8728 dress right away, I decided to be smart about it and cut a red cotton/poly/spandex blend version first to test the fit. Well… I wore it for all of like 5 minutes, deemed it fine and cut this floral/striped version.

The only unfortunate issue of my proceeding so fast is that I should have put in some darts at the back of the neckline. Not really wanting to unpick the neckline, I just left it. It’s not too terrible anyhow and it doesn’t make me love the dress any less.

I could probably add a black belt with this, but I really didn’t see the need with all of the horizontal strips running across the bodice. Maybe I’ll add a belt come winter when I layer it up with a cardigan and tights.

I gathered the skirt like instructed, but I went and added clear elastic to the whole inner waist, using a zig zag stitch, when I attached the bodice to the skirt piece. I think this adds plenty of stabilization here for this full, drapey skirt. I also added the clear elastic to the shoulders – because I read you should do that with knits.

Check out this mad stripe matching at the side seams!

This dress was my first time using stitch witchery to glue down the hems before stitching them up. This dress wanted to curl a tiny bit at the edges, but not terribly. I thought using it would give me a nice clean finish at the hemmed areas – which it did. I don’t have any wonky or twisted hems – everything lies perfectly flat.

I also went and used my walking foot on nearly this whole dress. I had found on my first red version that I couldn’t sew the gathered yoke section to the waist without raising the presser foot every two stitches without the fabric bunching. That seam took ages!

This is one of the first dresses I own that I feel like I can throw it on & go in a vintage style, albeit a modern print.

I went and broke my own rule and wore this dress out before I blogged about it. I feel so feminine yet comfortable in this dress, both while at work and while running errands over the weekend.

While the fabric was expensive, I have no regrets about it. I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of flirty florals against the harsher backdrop of B&W stripes (or polka dots). Sadly there is no more of this fabric for you guys. :( Plus, I wish I could get myself some more for a top.

There seems to be a similar version of the fabric up on Gorgeous Fabrics. Before you get excited, it’s listed as Out of Stock… but perhaps she’s left this fabric up online since she could be getting more in. (As it’s been in the “out of stock” status for a couple weeks now instead of being removed.) If it does come back in stock, I’m very tempted to buy this one too.