BurdaStyle Sewing Vintage Modern Contest 2013, Jamie Shift Dress

This is my spin on the Vintage Modern Jamie Shift Dress for the "BurdaStyle Sewing Vintage Modern Contest 2013".

I started by ordering the book from Amazon. I was so excited to get started as all the patterns look amazing and not that difficult. There are so many projects I am going to make from this book. I think I can use a lot of my stash for most of them.

I put together a bit of a story board on pinterest to get some inspiration and in doing so I now have a  love for shift dresses and cant wait to get started on the next one. I have a great fabric which is perfect for it that I picked up from  Tessuti Fabrics a few months ago called Stainglass Garden. It has a real sixties vibe to it.

                                                      

Stainglass Garden Farbic from Tessuti

I decided on adding a yoke and deleting the front darts. I found a lace collar in my stash which suited the style.
This dress was supposed to be the toile but I decided as I was sewing that the fabric was too cute for a toile and hoped that the fit would be ok. It turned out that I just needed to add some darts in the back and alter the armholes as they were very small.

The only real challenge with this dress was finishing the seams which has nothing to do with the pattern just my overlocker which has a mind of it's own. A beast.
It was working beautifully for months with a perfect tension and then I changed the colour of thread to black to finish this dress. What a stupid idea! I spent at least one hour threading it!! AGGGHH!! Now, I can't get the tension right. It's a bit loose on the lower threads. If anybody has ideas or tricks on how to get the perfect tension please share :)

Anyway, I decided to enter this one in the competition and if I get time to make up another one in the "real" fabric I will enter that also.

What I love the most about this dress is that's it's really comfy to wear and can be worn with or without a belt, although adding the belt makes it a bit short! Nothing a leggin cant fix.

Can't wait to get started on the next one.

Update as of 19th of February. I have been chosen as a finalist. If you are a Burdastyle member please cast your vote here