sewaholic saltspring dress and a mini wardrobe malfunction

honestly i was on the fence about the saltspring dress pattern when it was released. reason being - the tiny straps meant i'd have to go strapless bra with this, which i avoid when possible. i've seen versions with thicker straps and considered that option. but what pushed me over was seeing all of the lovely versions everyone has been posting. plus the fact that many people said you could omit the zipper, yay! and i had a couple drapey fabrics sitting in my stash just waiting for a pattern like this.

so i finally broke down and ordered it. thank you Pink Chalk Fabrics for the super quick free shipping. (all of their patterns ship free within the US). you know i love some free shipping.

as soon as the pattern arrived i actually stopped the project i had already started so that i could start this one. i traced my pattern onto swedish tracing paper (love!) and omitted the center seam allowances on the back skirt and back bodice pieces and cut those on the fold, omitting the zipper. i did a straight size 8 to fit my bust and waist measurements. because the skirt just flares out, i ignored the fact that my hip measurement is not in line with a sewaholic size 8. so my skirt feels a bit too wide and full. next time i will grade the skirt down to a 2 in order to more closely match my hip measurement.

i fully lined the dress bodice and skirt using some white cotton voile that i got on super sale from fabric.com. the outer fabric is a blue and white paisley type print from joann's. it's very slippery and kind of shiny so it's probably some sort of poly blend. also i used clear elastic for the waistband (also from fabric.com), which i like better than regular elastic now because it's less bulky and it has good recovery.

it was a really quick project. i traced my pattern and cut the fabric last week on sunday night and by wednesday night i was hemming the dress. a little spray starch does wonders when hemming fabric like this and also when pressing the straps.

speaking of straps. that is a sad point. before i started sewing the dress, i skimmed through the sewalong that was posted on the sewaholic blog to see if there were any tips that might be helpful. i vaguely remembered something about trimming the ends of the straps closely on the inside to reduce bulk. with this fabric. bad idea. or i guess i just did an awesome job of trimming closely! ha ha. next time i will definitely not trim those straps down much at all, and i will do a lot of back and forth reinforcing stitches where the straps meet the bodice points.

so here's the story. last friday night i decided to wear the dress to go out with some girlfriends. well i drove to my friend's place and then when we were leaving her house to go out, i sat down in her car... and snap. my strap popped. i had knotted the straps so that they wouldn't come undone, and i know they weren't too tight because a few times they started to creep down my shoulders, so i probably could've tied them tighter. but it must've pulled on the strap too much when i sat down, so the left strap came unattached from the bodice back. first i considered tucking one or both straps down into my bra and pretending the offending strap didn't exist. then i decided to go back inside my friend's house in search of a safetypin, but no luck. plus that probably wouldn't have looked so good anyway. instead i ended up borrowing one of my friend's dresses. sadness. so my saltspring barely made it out of the house.

plus, slightly embarrassing that my me-made dress came apart, since my friends knew i made it. i felt like that reflected poorly on my sewing skills. but thankfully, friends don't judge, so they didn't think anything of it. at least my strap didn't come off when we were somewhere more public! yikes. so when i got home i hand sewed the strap back on and reinforced it like crazy. and then i went back and did a ton of hand stitching to reinforce the other straps too.

so hopefully next time i wear this dress out, it'll make it further than the car! ha ha. have you had any wardrobe malfunctions while wearing your sewing projects?