rainbow sewing

With a young girl’s birthday and the school holidays inching ever closer, it has been time to get the rainbow dress made. I won’t be able to do any work on it during the school holidays as it is to be a surprise, so it needs to be completed before the holidays arrive.

Yesterday I spent the day sewing together the colourful swashes that make up the dress. It was fun and very satisfying – because it worked! As Jenny suggested, I started each seam at the bottom of the dress because that’s where more of it was bias cut. She advised that this would give a better chance of the seams working. And they worked very well! (Thanks Jenny!)

The dress isn’t finished yet – I still have most of the back and all of the lining to do. But hopefully today or tomorrow I’ll get it done, and some photos taken to share with you. I feel like you’ve all been involved from very early on in this dress, with so many of you having voted for your preferred design and giving tips on its construction.

I have learnt something very useful from this dress and the pants that I made recently, and that is that you do not need a special presser foot for sewing invisible zips. On the zip itself it says that you do, but I disagree! I have now managed to successfully insert two invisible zips using just a normal zipper foot. Sure it might be a little easier with a special foot, but it still works ok without. So if you’ve believed the zipper instructions and haven’t ever used one because it says you need a special foot – ignore those instructions and get in there and give it a go!