Back when I made my first shingle dress early last year, I said that I would make another.  Well, this blog post is evidence that I do as I say – but it is also evidence of how long this can take.  Around eighteen months, apparently!  This time I used stripes, to really make the most of those angled shingle pieces.

 Now, I do understand that lime green and black stripes are possibly not everyone’s cup of tea.  But they are mine!  I paid full price for this fabric from Darn Cheap Fabrics when it first became available, although it did eventually move to the $2 table.  But you never know!  It’s very stretchy and has a pretty high polyester content, but also has vibrant colour, excellent recovery, and fantastic texture.

After my experiences with my last dress, I tried out a few ways to hem the bottoms of the shingles.  Turned and stitched with a twin needle, zig zagged, overlocked, roll hemmed on the overlocker.  They all looked terrible.  So in the end I left the edges raw.  They show no signs at all of fraying or ravelling in any way, so I’m happy with that.

I made size 14, and did most of the sewing on the sewing machine.  There are lots of layers through the side seams, with the under dress then the shingles on top, and in places where they overlap, so I felt that machine sewing left less room for error.  Some finishing was on the overlocker, and the sleeves were set in using the overlocker as well.  The neck band was applied to the outside with the sewing machine, then turned over the layers to the inside and stitched in the ditch.

This is such a fun dress to sew and to wear.  And it creates all sorts of fun optical illusions!  I do like the “slimming” illusion.  My husband says that I need to make sure that I never wear this dress on television – the cameras couldn’t cope.  Since I am never actually filmed for television I don’t see that as a potential problem.

Other pattern details:  if you haven’t already worked it out this is Vogue 8904.  The pattern description is as follows:

Now I am tempted to make the shorter sleeveless version in more sedate stripes for summer.  I wonder what else is in the stash?