Out Of The Closet: Taffeta Stripe Dress

When I saw this striped polyester tafetta fabric on a trip to Estonia back in 2010, the perfect pattern for it immediately popped up in my mind – Burda Easy Fashion spring/summer 2009 dress. This particular magazine is one of my absolute favourites since I would still like to make most of the models in it. There are two versions of this dress in the magazine, one of them with a bow belt:

This is my fabric:

And this is my dress:

My dear friend Tiina, who is a photographer (her works can be seen here), took the photos of the dress and we had a full session, playing around with different accessories:

I enjoyed sewing this dress very much, the pattern has a great fit, no alterations whatsoever were needed. The only downside was that the fabric is not very forgiving – once the seam is sewed, the stitch marks stay and if you need to pick the seam, the marks cannot be removed by pressing or anything. On my dress, they are visible on one of the side seams of the skirt, but in order to notice this you have to look for it, so I am not letting myself be bothered by it.

Because this project was my very first using a fabric with stripes, the bodice and skirt stripes do not match up. It didn´t even occur to me to check it until the dress was nearly completed 🙂 But as all of the “Out Of The Closet” items that I am showing you are the first I made after a break of several years in sewing (and prior to that I was a teenage sewist, not paying too much attention to anything, I didn´t even press the garment while in process!), it taught me a valuable lesson. Because of this mistake, I only wear the dress with a belt, so that the discontinuity of the stripes doesn´t strike the eye.

The Easy Fashion also suggests sewing a tulle petticoat, but I didn´t since I am happy with the puffiness of the skirt the way it is.

Although the dress was finished in 2010, I wore it for the first time in February 2012, for the reception of the Independence Day of Estonia at King Georges hotel, organized by the Estonian Embassy in Athens. It is a very nice tradition to invite all the local Estonians and I attended every time. The tradition continued this year as well, but as some readers already know, I am currently in Estonia and couldn’t participate. Here is a photo from February 2012:

And last but not least, two close ups: