Hi everybody! I’m doing a bit of summery sew my stash to use up some of these wonderful fabrics I’ve been hoarding. The red fabric was another thrift store find, can’t beat the price! And surprisingly my thrift store fabrics have been equally as nice as the materials I pick up in traditional fabric stores. Bright red isn’t a color I own a lot of, unless its red lipstick then Im down.
So when I picked this fabric up I immediately thought of simplicity 8635. Maybe its because the pattern features a red outfit on the front, but I mostly wanted to sew that strappy back. I actually had to pick up the pattern before I could start this project. Remember to always look for your sales! I find pattern sales frequently between Joann’s Fabric and Hobby Lobby. I picked up this pattern during a Joann’s sale. Looking at the sizing on the back I decided to sew up at size 6, since I have a petite bust. I also wanted my skirt to be a midi length.
Cutting out the fabric was a fairly simple process. A special thank you goes out to Alice-May from The Stitch Edit. On her fabulous blog she posted her yellow dress using this same pattern and she mentioned how pointless the front seam is. Thanks to her expertise I cut the front of my skirt on the fold and it looks great! Originally, I had full intentions of making this as a dress but I was fussing about putting the two pieces together. I didn’t want to deal with a zip. Somewhere I got the idea to save myself stress and just make it a two piece set. I was in love with the idea of a red strappy top for a summer so it worked out.
The bodice is mostly backless which brings up the question, what bra do you wear?? But since the front bodice piece is fully interfaced and also lined, I found that the top keeps its shape. Think Wonder Woman boobie armor. Maybe its the red that makes me think that. Anyways my fabric choice helped as well because its quite thick. It has a sort of coarse texture to it. Mom asked if the straps were hard to make and usually they’re not too bad. However, the weight and texture of this material made the straps difficult to pull through. The pattern suggested pulling the straps through from one end but they were so long and my loop turner wasn’t big enough. So I ended up leaving the seam open in the middle of the strap to pull through from each end, then slip stitched the middle of the strap.
