A Completed Simplicity 1418

geometric Simplicity 1418

A nice, big, mid-week good morning to you all!  I am happy today, things are finally getting back to normal over here in my neck of the woods.  The boy’s hand is starting to become more moveable, the week back to school was put on hold, and I have a new dress completed that was ready to wear for last evening’s night out with my guy.  The dress I am taking about is this simple looking Simplicity 1418.  I say simple because I went with the easiest option of the bunch.  The other choices had these great looking back details – that I know I will eventually get around to making – but for this specific project, I wanted something that wouldn’t take that long.

Simplicity 1418

The dress did take three days to make, but three days with a little bit here and a little bit there.  Had I done it all in one sitting, I don’t think it would have taken more than three hours, maybe close to four.  It also helps to make things go a little faster once the tissue pattern has been cut out.  Cutting out all the paper pieces, for me, takes longer than assembling the bodice sometimes.  So next dress will be much quicker.

Simplicity 1418 dress

Everything about this dress is wonderful, except for the straps.  I am starting to notice a pattern with straps such as these, and I now think it has everything to do with me and the shape of my shoulders.  I am guessing here, but so far I can never get straps like this to lie flat.  They always look like they are gaping where the bodice and the strap meet; and try, try, try as I did, I just couldn’t get these to be flat.  This was the only unpicking that I did with this dress, and I did it several times with no luck.  I almost thought that I might have overlooked something, but nope all my dots were lined up exactly, and there was no extra step that I had skipped.  I even tried flipping the straps, just in case, but that was obviously the wrong way, so I did in fact put these things in correctly.  My final thoughts on the matter were to just leave them as they were because, more than likely, I will be wearing a sweater over the dress and if I am not, my hair is long enough to cover those unsightly imperfections.  It’s those little details that sometimes give me the biggest headache.

In the end, I am sure I am the only one noticing this little issue, so it’s all good.  Now, had I put just a bit more thought into cutting the fabric out, I could have done a bit better with the pattern matching.  I am slightly off, but it doesn’t look too bad considering I took no thought for pattern matching at all.  I do absolutely love geometric prints, but they can occasionally make for some hard lining up.  Oh, well, I am not gonna complain about that little detail.  I really like this dress!  I am even about to start another one, but one without those annoying little straps.

You can see my pattern review over here, and my material was from the Michael Miller Graphyx Collection over on Fabric.com.  Getting some good pictures of this dress was hard enough, I find white clothing hard to photograph, so my apologies for no photos of the back.  It is a basic straight neck line, and the zipper is nicely concealed on the side.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.  Has anyone else made this dress?  Let me know what you think.

retro style geometric dress

*Linking up with:  Craftastic Monday, Creative Mondays, Do Tell Tuesday, Tuesday’s With a Twist, Passion for Fashion, and Simple Sequins

14 Replies to “A Completed Simplicity 1418”

  2. I love your finished product and it looks great on you. Agree completely about cutting out paper patterns, you never hear anyone saying “Wow I had the greatest time on the weekend cutting out paper patterns, it’s my favourite thing to do and I don’t mind the fact that it takes the better part of my Saturday morning to do it, and by the time I’m finished I occasionally am so down by the process that I don’t want to sew that item that I was initially so exited by”. Would have loved to have seen a photo of the back, I have this pattern and I want to make it, but am daunted by the process of sewing and then failing to make something to wear using fabric which I have paid more than I wanted to at the time of purchase, but did anyway because the fabric was “calling to me- saying you know you love me”. So in short thanks for the inspiration, I think I will give it a go, and I’ll try not to dwell on the possibility of failure but rather your can do attitude of it all being a process and a learning curve, where everything you do results in becoming more confident to attempt the next step; and few people that I know would ever attempt to make anything, and instead opt to buy off-the-rack and never experience that smug little feeling of “I made it myself”. Thanks so much for sharing.

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    1. I knew I couldn’t be the only one who disliked pattern tracing that much! 😉 After reading your comment, I remembered that I did not post a photo of the back – boo for me! I will say it wasn’t anything special. I made the full back version, which didn’t have the decorative criss-crossing. When I make it again, I am thinking to try it with that back. It is a wonderful feeling to make your own clothes, and with the more you make, the better you get. Good luck with yours! I’m sure you will do well. If not, you can always turn it into a skirt. (I’ve done that more than a handful of times.)

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  3. I love the pattern of this! I’ve yet to ever choose a pattern that would require any sort of thought/care/precision when cutting in order to match up, so I just always choose “Random” patterns, because I don’t really even know how to do the whole matching up deal yet.

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    1. Sometimes I just spend an afternoon cutting out the paper pieces of several patterns. I don’t trace them usually just because of the extra time it would take. There are a few I wished that I had traced though.

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