Feedsack Floral Cambie

At last! I have made the beloved Cambie dress from Sewaholic! This is a smashing dress, and it was a joy to sew. All of the little details in it reminded me why I love sewing so very much. I used a 1930s reproduction feedsack cotton from Hart's Fabric I had in my stash, and it compliments the girliness of this dress so well.

I love the look of this dress, but I had steered away from this pattern before now because I'm not Sewaholic's target shape, and I was concerned with the amount of fitting I would have to do to get it to work for me. Tasia targets a pear-shaped woman, and I am more of an hourglass. Just looking at the pattern envelope, based on measurements I am a 16 in the bust, 12 in the waist and 8 at the hip! 

Since I started fitting with my sloper, though, the task of fitting this pattern seemed a lot less daunting. All I had to do was put my sloper up against the pattern, trace lines to match things up, and then sew a test muslin just to make sure things weren't wonky. I was very happy with how the fit of the sweetheart neckline turned out, too. I did make one slight tweak to the pattern instructions and understitched the sweetheart. I wanted to make sure there was no lining peeking out. 

I did have one problem that I didn't catch in the muslin stage at the sleeves. I've got a bit of gaping at the back of the bodice at the armscye. I took to Instagram to get some help from my sewcialist friends, and came up with 2 main problem spots: 

1. I was treating the sleeve more like a strap in my mind, and for some reason I thought the shoulder seam should be set back a ways off my shoulder. I actually adjusted it to be this way, and come to find out, that's not right! 
2. Some folks noted that the curve of the shoulder is very important with the Cambie, and if the curve doesn't match your shoulder just right, it will cause weird distortion like what you see here. So I have a bit of tweaking to do with the curve. 

I fit by myself most of the time, and this time it really would have helped to have another person when I was doing the muslin. I took an inch out of the shoulder seam after doing the muslin, both on the back bodice and sleeve, consistently all the way across. If someone would have been helping me, or my dress form matched me more closely, I could have pinned that adjustment to be much more exact, and seen what it felt like to move about in it.

Oh well! A reason to sew a second! The challenge will be adjusting this for my next version while still allowing good mobility. When my arm is raised, it looks quite nice. 

One of my favorite details about this dress is it's fully lined. It looks absolutely beautiful on the inside! There's pockets in there, too, though I forgot to show them to you when I snapped these photos. There's something so delightful about pockets in a dress! 

I made 2 tweaks on the lining from the instructions. First, I shortened my lining skirt by 1/4" so it would be nice and hidden at the bottom of the dress. Second, I handstitched the lining to the zipper. I did a lapped zip, and I haven't sorted out a way to finish a lining by machine at the edge of a lapped zip. Do you know a way?