Is it a curtain? No no, it’s a lace dress!

SEWING AN EASY LACE DRESS

This was a project that I’ve been dying to start for a very long time. I have made a skirt version of it some time ago. 

(for investigative personalities it is Lace Skirt, I did it!)

While the workload gets more and more, I had been daydreaming about my new sewing project for days. I then decided to make a lace dress since - I assumed - it would finish in a very short time. 

I was right. I finished sewing this dress in 30 minutes! Sewing a lace dress was indeed easy, but you have to be very careful in styling it; ‘cause you may end up looking as if you wrapped around your curtain before going out! :P  The pattern I used for this dress was from BurdaStyle Magazine issue 03/2012 no. 102. The only alteration I made was reducing the size of front and back patterns from the middle ‘cause it’s quite a loose cut pattern. 

When the lace got back on the high ranks of trends list, almost all the fabric stores started selling various versions of them. Many of them are actually gauze - with lace prints on them. I have a sinister feeling that some of the fabrics are just curtain fabric leftovers from earlier seasons… :)  

Tips for Sewing a Lace Dress: 

• Since the fabric is very elastic, you should sew it like a jersey and use a jersey pin, if possible. 

• When stitching the two pieces together, be very careful about the flexibleness of the fabric and pin the pieces carefully for avoiding slipping. 
• Since you cannot sew it easily like a normal weight fabric, it gets very hard to close the side seams with overlocking. So I machine stitched them twice and cut the extra bits very carefully. 
• Definitely KEEP your lace leftovers.You can use them in various other occasions later. I intent to share with you some of my ideas on that as well. 

Let’s talk about how to wear this dress then. I’d like to share with you a SYS tip about this. Last summer, I made quite a lot of outfits using lightweight cotton fabrics. After a while I got bored about sewing interlining for each of them and decided to sew one lining dress and combine it with others. The below photo shows that lining dress that I made from a white jersey fabric. It may look like a  bedgown, but it is very practical. 

After you succeed in sewing an elastic fabric properly, you can easily fold the ends twice and have a clean neckline.  

Finally, let me show you a different version of this lace dress… So you thought that I was being lazy in deciding not to sew the lining, huh? Wear it with different colors of linings and you’ll have various different outfits at the same time! :)

Some might remember this dress from one of the initial posts of my blog. I made this dress as another colorful lining for my Simplicity 3833 dress. The pattern is a 1960s retro pattern and is one of my favorites so far. You may check it out from here. 

Wear it with different accessories and you’ll have a different dress every time! Here’s my first lace dress project. How ‘bout you? 

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