Kylie Dress

Well. It's done. And I'm glad. I'm less than pleased with how the back of the dress looks; I had anticipated there would be some issues there, but with the placket confusion I had hoped I was wrong (Lesson learned: trust my sewing instincts, as untested as they are).
The front looks nice though & the print of the fabric is ok. As much trouble as I had with this pattern, I do think I'll give it another go, especially since it's sized all the way up to 6T. All the issues I had with it are remedied now that I've actually done them. The e-book does have one (very) misleading illustration and then there is the blatant lack of placket description, but there's no lesson like experience, so I'm hoping for a much smoother encounter the next time around.
I love the lines of this dress & I think it would look great in a special occasion fabric. Maybe even with a translucent overlay. Anyway, enough talk. Time for pictures.
The dress front:

Here's a closeup of the back wonky-ness. See how the bodice is cock-eyed? Sigh.

And TA DA! Here is my placket, which I find very functional, by the way. I just can't beleive that the instructions didn't go into the construction of it more thoroughly. Had it not been for the gals over at PR, I wouldn't have been able to figure it out. Guess that means I need another sewing book. The next time I do this dress, I'm planning on doing a tutorial on the placket since I couldn't find any.



I got a lot of compliments on the dress at meeting & I just smiled & said thank you. No need to point out it's imperfections. So, here are some lessons the Kylie pattern taught me:

• Obviously, the placket
• Using a slip stitch. I had never done this before & had to look it up to attach the bodice lining to the skirt. My stitches started out downright ugly, but improved significantly towards the end (not significantly enough to share pictures, however)
• Slip stitching Velcro is the pits. Really. Had I read the instructions a little more thoroughly I would have seen that they suggested the iron on kind. Of course. Otherwise you see the stitching on the back. No problem, I now know how to slip stitch. It was more work than I anticipated, but the results are so much cleaner.