Dear Readers,I made a terrible mistake. The sign that my pinterest board has become too big for my eyes has come. When I said that I was going to make Lekala 4362 because it reminded me of a Ralph Lauren design, I was terribly wrong... It was Michael Kors. Let's see it in pictures :
Now that I confessed my mistake, let's look at my version, my Michael Kors knock-off very own Mickael Chors dress.
The differences that you can notice with the original "inspiration" are 1/ the pleats at the shoulder and 2/ the symmetrical hem. Although number 2 is deliberate, I have to admit that number 1 is probably linked to my limited non-existant understanding of russian...The fabric is an extremely lightweight denim bought before I moved out of NYC at Moods. I know it looks like linen but it's not, I promise!
On the opposite of my Lekala experience, this pattern required quite some work before I "made it work". First, as you know the patterns are generated automatically to fit your measurements, which I believe is fine when doing simple shapes, but becomes a bit more complicated when there are slashes and pleats and rotated darts all over... So that means WALKING ALL THE SEAMS, to make sure they match.The good thing is that I could still trust the fit enough not to make a muslin (time is a rare luxury these days). However the bottom part did not come "exactly as expected". On the below pictures the dress is just pinned at the sides on my form :
Hum... Not really what I had in mind so I re-draped the front skirt portion and transferred the changes to the pattern to get this :
I also took the back in before inserting the invisible zipper and decided to do my usual 4" inches tapering on pencil skirts, adding a slit at the back because it was obviously too late for a vent... I drafted a lining (the front bodice lining is included, one less thing to do) and found the most luscious silk twill in my stash. I have 0 idea where it comes from but if I had to (wondering who would threaten to take my dog if I could not remember where each piece of my stash is from?? The stash police maybe...), I would bet on Paron's in NYC.
For the construction side, it went rather smoothly. I finished the lining edges to edges (the lining is a tiny bit smaller than the dress) because I hate facings. Did I tell you I hate facings? Ok, yes I probably did... But really, I HATE facings. The invisible zipper, the best one I ever sewed according to The Old Man, was inserted following the technique that I mentioned several times. Because it's the best. Yes. It. Is.One last thing, there is a new feature on the russian lekala website (leko-mail.net), if you click on "order" for a pattern, then under the technical drawing the last icon before the "save" button takes you to a page where you can CHANGE THE COLOR OR THE PRINT of the illustration. OMG. SO MUCH FUN!!! Go and try it for the dress I just made, and it works for all their recent patterns!Sometimes I wonder how a company can be so advanced on their core technology (automated made to measure patterns!!) and so behind with their website designs and marketing... What do you think ? Do you enjoy this fun feature ?Come back soon because I've been away from the blog for the only valid reason: I've been sewing a lot (well at least for my standards)... More later!