Pattern review: Vogue 8742

Well, it started off on a seemingly good foot. Orange dress pressed and ready to go? Check! Heels relatively clean and unscuffed? Check! Slick of neutral lippie? Check! Hooray, let's go take some photos!

I really should have checked with the wind in regard to the hair, because the wind totally did not want to play ball. I lasted about 2 minutes, and then gave up and shoved the tresses back into the usual bun. So excuse the coiff (I try to, on a daily basis) and let's talk DRESS!




Is this dress me, or is it me? (Correct answer: it's very me!) It's bright! It's comfy! It needs to be worn with a statement necklace! I'm in love!

It was really very easy to sew up - the hardest part was doing the gathering, and even that was fairly simple as far as these things go. I quite like how slim the sleeves are, which is a very good thing - so often on a knit dress pattern you end up with quite wide sleeves that seem to do nothing but flap around in the wind, and since I was having enough wind issues as was, I was happy that my nice slight sleeves were behaving themselves when I braved the elements for the photo shoot.

The fabric used is a merino wool knit from The Fabric Store. It really is the perfect weight for a dress like this - not quite as thick as a ponti, but heavier than a t-shirt jersey weight. It sewed up like a dream, pressed up well and is the most awesome sort of orange around!

The really fun thing about this pattern was using bias binding tape to finish the neck edge. It was a simple, quick and easy way to give a neckline a lovely finish. I'd never put bias tape onto a jersey knit before, but this is one little trick that I'll be using again!

All the hems have been double stitched to give the appearance of a coverstitch finish. I used my knit stitch on all seams, but not for the hems. Instead, I increased my stitch length, and that gave it enough 'give' to handle a bit of fabric stretching without snapping. I much prefer a straight stitch hem finish to the knit stitch one - I find that the knit stitch can look messy, even when sewn in a perfectly straight line.

All in all, this is a terrific pattern that has resulted in a great looking, easy to wear dress. I might even make a sleeveless version out of cotton jersey for summer!

Project Details
Pattern: Vogue 8742, view B, size 8
Fabric: 1.3m of merino wool jersey knit (medium weight) from The Fabric Store.
Notions: Hook and eye for back closure, bias binding tape.

Note: Because there is a lot of long seams in this garment, I went through two reels of cotton making it, so if you decide you are going to make one yourself, grab that extra reel!