My Grecian Goddess dress

In the interest of cleaning up some old posts in my blog, I bring you a pattern test that got dropped this summer.  It fit some of the ladies, but overall it was hard to get it right.  It wasn’t the easiest pattern to make with all those gathers in knit materials.

I wasn’t sure if this style of dress would look okay on my figure, since it has a fitted waist. I tend to gain weight at my waist, so I try to stay away from these styles. I do really like how it turned out, though. You needed a fabric with a good drape to it. My fabric is a poly knit and was a Calvin Klein fabric. It was only 45″ wide, so it took a bit more yardage than it would have if it had been a normal 60″ knit width.  I had to go back to the fabric store for more.

It needed to be drapey, so fabric choice was pretty important.  I would not use a cotton lycra for something like this.  A jersey, ITY, thinner bamboo jersey or a viscose is best.  I think this was a viscose knit.  It was basically labeled as Calvin Klein knit.  They don’t label well, pretty much…ever.

I added micro mesh between the waist pieces.  This added a bit of tightening and kept it in place better.  When you are a rectangle there really isn’t much for hips to keep things in place.  I also sandwiched the top part of the waistband pieces with the top pieces, which wasn’t how it was in the instructions.  I like to enclose all seams if I can.

Overall, this was a very cute dress, so it’s a bummer she dropped it.  This style fit some body types better than others.  Keeping the knit gathers even was the hardest part.  I gathered mine on the serger, which gave the seam some stability when attaching to the ungathered pieces.  Probably not a beginner pattern, but still plenty worth the effort.

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