This time of year I think it’s really important to have clothes that are comfortable and easy to move in and this dress meets that brief perfectly. It is the Ebony Dress from Closet Core patterns,
made with a gorgeous ITY Silky Stretch knit gifted to me by Minerva. The fabric is a medium weight ITY with a slight sheen. (ITY stands for Interlock Twisted Yarn).
I’m so happy with it and especially with how comfy it feels, I know i’m going to be wearing this a lot over the coming weeks. One big advantage to ITY is that it doesn’t crease easily and so will look just as good at the end of the day as it does at the start.
I love the retro feel to the fabric and wanted to showcase the tile like pattern by placing the largest design centrally on the front which meant changing the cutting layout from that shown in the Closet Core pattern instructions. This also meant that I didn’t have much room when cutting out (a challenge my husband rose to admirably as he kindly helps with this part of the process). A rotary cutter and pattern weights are a definite advantage when working with stretch fabrics.
I did my usual trick of downsizing for the shoulder area and grading out to a larger size for the bust and waist. I’ve found this is effectively the same as doing a full bust adjustment when working with stretch jersey. I also added 1.5” to the length as it seemed a little short.
Now this fabric being an ITY has to be treated with respect, it is both stretchy and slippy so clips (and lots of them) became my greatest friends. I mostly used my overlocker for the construction elements of the dress and cover stitch machine for the hems but when I did use the normal sewing machine I used the walking foot and a jersey needle with the stitch set to a zig zag. I did find that using tissue paper between the pressure foot and my fabric helped when adding the clear elastic to stabilise my shoulder seams. I didn’t do this initially and managed to get the fabric caught up in my faceplate and had a real challenge releasing it. This probably wouldn’t have happened on a larger section of fabric it’s just the shoulders are relatively narrow and the seam allowance at 10mm, mean you are working close to the edge of the fabric. Although it’s a medium weight ITY it’s still quite fine and so I should of realised that this would cause issues.
So long as you take your time and use the right equipment (ie walking foot or overlocker) this fabric is lovely to work with.
I made one small mistake, sewing the wrong seam allowance when attaching the neckband. The pattern calls for 10mm but I just automatically sewed 5/8” (MS brain strikes again). I had completed the neckband before I realised, but then decided that I liked how it looked and so kept it at the narrower width.
Apart from those few issues the dress went together really quickly and I enjoyed sewing it.
It’s a shame that you can’t see how swingy it is with me being sat in the chair but I think you can still see how lovely it hangs. I will definitely be making more Ebony’s in the future and also quite fancy a pair of leggings in the ITY fabric.
#MinervaBrandAmbassador, #MinervaMakes, #MinervaMakers, #ClosetCorePatterns, #EbonyDressSeated, #SewnShownSeated
Leave a Reply