Vogue 1086 dress repeat

I am so enarmoured of my silk-cotton batiste dress, that I had to make another one.

This version is cotton cambric from Goldhawk Rd. It is even more cool and lightweight to wear than the previous version.
Inside, the bodice and waist lining and "interfacing" are again silk-cotton batiste from Greenfields (cream left over from a blouse). I did not have enough of this to line the skirt. I cut out a skirt lining from imperial batiste, but it was so coarse in comparison to the silk blend that I ended up making a 6 gore petticoat from it instead. I will wear this with the dress until I visit Sydney again and can go fabric shopping for some more silk blend :).
I have just read Slapdash Sewist's post about her year of posts with not only fabulous clothes, but full on construction details and tutorials (which I have been just lapping up). This has inspired me to show photographs of my construction changes to this pattern instead of lazily just showing a finished object photo, which seems to be my default post.
Disclaimer.
My photographs are not nearly so detailed.
The centre back finish was mentioned a few times in the reviews as a problematic area.
The pattern instructions have you sew each upper back bodice up to a marked square, I suppose to reduce bulk and to stop you from needing to clip at the point. I found this a bit fiddly the first time, so for my current version I machine basted the back bodice pieces together vertically edge to edge, through the marked square, then sewed the upper back to the lower back bodice (repeat for lining).
I pressed the seam down towards the lower bodice at this section, and unpicked the basting above the seamline.

This allowed me a neat turn at the centre back, which was easy to topstitch.

I used my new favourite technique for sheers of sewing the lining seams with a 2 thread rolled hem stitch on the overlocker.

This was terrific on the silk-cotton batiste, but not successful on the imperial batiste or the cambric. I used french seams on these instead.


Here is my photograph of machine sewing the armscye seams for my lined bodice. I sewed the neckline first, then folded each shoulder section over the neckline and opposite shoulder section, and pulled it through to the right side after stitching. This is such lightweight fabric that there was no difficulty in rolling the opposite shoulder section inside the right sides together of the section I was working on.
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If you would like to see much better photos of how to do this slightly differently, look here.
I did not have much to finish on this dress today, just the zip and hem. Instead I rather belatedly asked my daughter how I should answer this question from Debra Martin "Does she sew?"
She said I should say "sometimes, and yes, today"


It did not take nearly so much persuasion as I needed to use last school holidays!