To start with, this isn’t my first Appleton. I made a few of them for my mom for Christmas (one test that she got around Thanksgiving and two for Christmas presents from the pets). Out of respect, I did not post her dresses to the blog. I did post one on the KC Pinheads Facebook pages just incase they had some fitting advice for me. She didn’t like it but at least understood why. Her dresses look so great on her but we do have the discussion of are they too long. The dress covers the top of her knee-high compression support stockings by three inches so I say it is perfect length because I was told to make it long enough to cover the top of the stockings. She thinks it is too long. However, the dresses in the post are the first ones I ever made for myself.
Picking pattern size was the hardest part. There is a lot of negative ease in the pattern. I don’t usually do too much negative ease. So choosing size was a big hurdle. In fact I traced a 14/18 combo then about a week later , I had size doubts and then re-traced the pattern out in a 16/18 combo. In the end, I used the 16 E/F for the bust and grading out to the 18 at the waist line (where the ties wrap through is what I took as waistline). I ended up with about 5 inches negative ease (about a 2 inch reduction in negative ease). My bust is around a 42 inch.
Since I have made this dress before, I didn’t use the instruction really. I did put it out when it came time to apply the neckband.
The only other alteration I made was to shorten the dress by 2 inches at the hem and to take a 2.25 inch hem.
I decided to remake this dress for a friend’s wedding in early June. The only change I made was to length the short sleeves to almost elbow length. They may be a little long but I like them a bit better. This one is from a little thinner ITY. It feels so silky to the touch.
But as my wardrobe is more separates based, I really want to modify the Appleton into a top using Cashmerette’s hack they release.
sewbeading 