Wrap Dress Progress

Why is it that often a project that appears to be "easy" turns out to be a huge pain in the neck? Take NL 6674 for example. It looks easy enough, and in fact it is easy to cut out and assemble. However, it's taken me 5 (yes, you read that correctly- FIVE) bodice muslins and 2 skirt muslins to get to the point I'm at now: about to make a "test run" dress, or in other words, a wearable muslin. I won't bore you with the details of all the five bodice muslins. I will, however, share the adjustments that I made to the pattern for this next (6th) version:

I started with a size 16.

I made a 1/4" FBA (green lines).

I shortened the bodice 3/8" above the bust (red line).

I lengthened the bodice 1" below the bust (blue lines).

I angled the dart up slightly and moved the whole thing up 1/4" (pink lines).

I added 1/2" of width to the sleeve by slashing and spreading:

I added 1/2" of width to the front and back skirt pieces (for a total of 1" front and back- yellow lines) and darted out the excess at the waist (green lines).

I added 1 and 1/4" of length to the skirt (pink lines).

I can tell from the last bodice muslin that I will need to put a hidden snap on the front vee to prevent gaping. It looks fine when I'm standing straight and still , but it opens up when I move.

I have already cut the dress out and I have my fingers crossed that this time will be the charm. I will be sewing it up in an Asian print quilting cotton, hoping that it will be wearable and that I will be able to use this model for my "wearability test-drive."

Can you tell I'm feeling just a little bit burnt out on this project? It's quite possible that by the time I'm ready to start the actual Military Dress, I'll be too sick of this pattern to continue.

In order to refresh myself, I threw together a muslin of BWOF 02-2009-124A.

I like it, and I think I can make it work, but kind of like NL 6674, this deceptively simple dress may take more work than I thought. Sigh...

Why can't I find a truly easy project? For me.

On the bright side, I am still using up stash at a steady rate. The Asian print is from stash and I have a stash fabric picked out for the BWOF dress also. And even though making five muslins was not exactly fun, I did use up quite a bit of ugly fabric that was taking up valuable stash space. That's not a bad thing at all.