Combining Two Crafty Loves

I'm back with another Sew Over It garment.  What did I tell you?  It's going to be a #sewoveritsummer LOL

This time it's a Betty and I've combined two of my crafty loves into one dress.  Last summer when I found the Cotton and Steel yarn ball fabric from the Cat Lady collection on Craftsy I had to snap it up.  It was a ridiculous purchase in which although the sale price was great, the shipping was insane.  It was before Craftsy lowered their shipping costs and I paid more in shipping then I did for the fabric.  But hello!  Fabric.  With yarn on it!!!!!!  Sometimes you just need to be a bit frivolous and ridiculous.

I knew the minute I saw the fabric that it was destined to be a Betty dress.  I've never made Betty before so first things first.  I whipped up a muslin.  And then I did nothing.  I needed to do some alterations and I was perplexed how.  I just could not wrap my head around it so there it sat.  Untouched until a few weeks ago when I decided it was silly to just let it languish and come hell or high water I was going to get it figured out.  

Really the biggest problem was gaping in the V at the back.  I knew that if I pinched out the excess into a dart it solved it, but who wants darts there?  So on my pattern I created the dart where the gaping was then rotated it into the back waist darts.  Problem solved.  I also made the neckline a little deeper and a little less wide, widened the shoulders a smidge, did a sloped shoulder adjustment and finally added a bit of length to the bottom of the bodice.  Sewed up another muslin and was quite pleased with the fit, so cut out and sewed up the dress.  Of course my muslin was playing tricks on me and once the dress was finished I tried it on and gaping was happening everywhere.  Damn it.

I ended up fudging things a bit rather than go back to the drawing board and cut a new bodice because I was pretty tight on fabric at this point as is.  I took up almost an inch in the shoulders and shaved a little off the side seams and that has solved the problems for the most part, except I now have bust darts pointing way off course and some weird bunching at the lower armscye.  I am not going to quibble though.  I'm willing to bet only a seamstress would even look at the darts at all and if they're rude enough to point out that they are looking at my bust that closely then I'm really not interested in talking to them anyways! Ha ha!  In retrospect it occurs to me that perhaps a lot of my problems would have been solved if I'd gone down a size... sadly that didn't occur to me until after the fact.  

On the plus side of things, this is number three for my #2017MakeNine!  More bonuses are that I added pockets (used my favourite pockets which are from the Emery Dress pattern), my invisible zip went in without a hitch (thank you double sided tape - where have you been all my life?!?!) and most importantly I LOVE my new dress!