Becky and the Beanstalk: Sewing Challenge: Nautical Theme

This week’s sewing theme is Nautical. I’m not big on Nautical designs, but I’ve missed the past few weeks since I’ve been so busy so I thought I’d try my hand at a modified nautical look.

I took inspiration from the big nautical collars and striping. Instead of using blue stripes, I went for red. And instead of the usual large collars, I picked a pattern that had a unique collar to it.

I’ve had this red striped fabric around for years, but hadn’t done anything with it since it is all slippery. (Not that fabric above, that's just an example of red and blue nautical fabric.) Sewing slippery fabric is one of the most annoying things to me. Actually it might be the most annoying for me.

I bought this retro pattern earlier this year because I fell in love with the great lines of it. I knew I was never going to make it floor length, but I thought it would do pretty well as a knee length dress too.

I can usually whip up a dress in one night without too much trouble. This one is definitely a two day project. The top alone has 8 pieces of fabric and 8 pieces of lining, with numerous sections that needed to be gathered. The skirt was an additional 4 pieces and if I had decided to line it too then it would have been 4 more.

I laid out the fabric and made sure that Zoey was comfortably asleep on the couch so she wouldn’t try to walk all over it. Usually when I’m cutting I don’t use pins to save time, but in this case I wasn’t going to take any chances.

After cutting it, I had to sew around all of the edges so it wouldn’t fray. I hate doing this too since it takes so long. Silky fabric all around sucks…

Once all the prep work was done, I could get started on the actual construction. This took most of the night since there was such small detail work and it’s not easy to iron silky materials. But by the end of the night I had it all put together. Thought the directions it came with was missing important pieces. I could figure out what I needed to do, but it was still annoying.

My second day of work was mostly to do the fitting of the dress. I had to take out the hips, take in the waist, sew up the front, and hem.

Here’s the final dress. The hardest part of wearing this is going to be keeping the seam straight on the front! It keeps shifting as I move.