Make it for Mexico Challenge: #6, the Southport Dress by True Bias

And here comes Makelings, heading into the home stretch! With one day left to spare in my Make it for Mexico Sewing Challenge, I finished up the Southport Dress – the sixth garment in my seven garment challenge. The Challenge: sew six dresses and 1 top to create a warm weather wardrobe for our upcoming trip to Merida, MX for the Dia de Los Muertos festival.

Easy is the Thing

Because I was sewing to deadline, I deliberately chose patterns that would be easy to cut, fit and sew. The Southport meets these criteria and then some. The True Bias design just oozed with ease. We start with a loose, blousy, tank-style bodice, cinch it simply at the waist and add a long flowing skirt. Et voila! The perfect thing to throw on for lounging around the pool with a marguerita in hand, or wearing with a straw hat and tote at an open air market.

Happy With This Pattern

As I was trying to limit time consuming patching and piecing of PDF pattern pieces, I ordered a paper version of the Southport Dress pattern. I especially liked the instructions presented in booklet form on easy to read and annotate white paper (vs. a giant sheet of dingy newsprint). Though the cost of patterns from an independent designer is higher than those from the Big4 pattern makers, I think you get good value for your money.

For A Better Fit

After reading the many reviews of the popular Southport Dress pattern on PatternReview.com, I decided to alter the size 16 pattern in the following ways for a better fit:

• 1″ full bust adjustment
• Raised the neckline by 1″
• Raised the armseye by 1″
• Decreased the dress length by 6″ (I’m a shorty!)

This Fabric was my Nemisis

I fell in love with this Mood Exclusive Olive Oliva Indulgence Viscose challis fabric, and ordered 4 yards. There was a modern, tropical vibe to the graphic floral print, I loved the colorway, and viscose challis is suitably soft and billowy. On sale for $10 a yard, how could I go wrong?

Well, the fabric arrived with several ong, thread pull flaws that affected a 4″ x 48″ area along one selvedge edge. Mood gave me a .25 yard discount to compensate (big deal) and since I didn’t have time to bicker, I determined to work around the flaw.

And Then It Only Got Worse

When it came time to cutting, I could see why this fabric was on sale. Super shifty, I had a hard time getting the challis to stay on grain. I ended up taking up time cutting in a single layer, not for any sort of pattern matching, but just to keep the fabric on the square. Time suck.

The striking graphic was printed on a white challis ground fabric. Even though I used silk pins and 65 microtex needles in my machines, the fabric was prone to having white streaky thread pulls. Little white bits tended to pull up and show through to the top as well. I’m not even going going to talk about the horrible fraying. All in all, kind of a nightmare – especially when one is trying to sew quickly.

Construction Details

In lieu of stay stitching this crappy fabric, I used Vlieselene T12 bias stay tape. There is no way this fabric would have stayed in place for stay stitching. No way.

I knew sewing the drawstring from this fiddly viscose challis would be a complete debacle. I opted to cut a strip from an solid olive colored stable woven from my Fabric Stash to use for the drawstring.

My Pfaff Performance Icon normally sews lovely buttonholes, no problem, but not on this fabric. I tried a few samples and then chucked the whole notion of buttonholes. I just sewed the button plackets together without buttonholes. Thank the gods this is a pullover dress is all I have to say. These lovely cobalt blue shell buttons from Button Bird from my Button Hoard are purely decorative. So great to have a Stash and Hoard.

End Result

In a time and place when I really needed everything to go right, my fabric choice let me down. It would have been a much quicker and easier make with a better quality fabric. In the end, once completely finished, I’m pleased with the result. My Southport Dress was saved by True Bias’s great sewing pattern design and a cool graphic print.