Red Velvet Twist Dress

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I love a good twist dress, and I love a good velvet dress, so I thought I'd combine the two together into this l'il number. Full disclosure: I'm not overly happy with how this turned out - there were a few errors in the pattern drafting process that made the fit less than ideal (both too tight and too loose) but it's still wearable and I figure just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it doesn't deserve its own post.

So as you may have figured, this was a self-drafted pattern, which I based off the twist method in Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi. I think my first mistake was to use my stretch bodice and skirt block (i.e. no darts) rather than my woven block (with darts), which made the shaping all weird for me. I thought since I was using stretch velvet, I should go for the stretch block, but it wasn't really suited to something as intricate as this. I made a mock up out of some light jersey, and it actually looked quite good in this, so, after making a couple of alterations, I went ahead and cut it out of the velvet. This was mistake number two - since velvet is so much thicker and therefore drapes very differently to the jersey, the mock up was never going to give me a proper idea of how the actual thing would look.

Basically, though I'm cleverly posing in such a way to hide this issue as best as possible, there's a bit too much loose fabric above the bust - this draped down quite beautifully in the jersey but just hangs limply in the velvet and makes it look like it's too big for me. To compensate for this, I took it in a lot at the back - this did make it much less noticeable than it had been originally, but also resulted in it being super tight at the back. I'm fine with a little bit of tightness, but I'm used to it being around the waist area - turns out if you tighten things at your upper back, it makes it more difficult to move your arms, and if you also a close-fitting neckline, this is going to make you feel like you're being strangled, constantly. So yeah, in terms of fit, this dress could have gone better.

I also wasn't enamoured with the front slit situation, which all comes down to another of my drafting errors - basically I needed to make the overlap between the two front skirt pieces much wider. They pretty much didn't overlap at all, which meant that if I didn't sew up the centre front seam, it would be too indecent to count as a dress. Unfortunately, sewing up this seam caused too much tension around it, so it does look a little weird.

I realise this has been quite a negative post compared to usual, so I feel I must say that despite all the errors, I do still quite like the effect of this dress and do plan on wearing it every now and again. Sometimes projects don't go the way you'd planned, and although it can feel like a bit of a let down at the time, it gives you a good opportunity to learn from your mistakes. So now I know where I went wrong, hopefully when I come to retrying this (which I do intend to do, at some point) I'll know how to do it right!