Having Fun With Stretchy Knits

You learn something new every day, as long as you're open to the experience.  Just finished making this for one of my new clients, and while it was a much stretchier knit than the pattern was meant for (actually, it was meant for wovens, which could have spelled disaster), in the end it worked out beautifully.  I learned a couple of really good things:

• When you are working with a fine jersey, you need to sew much more slowly than you are used to.  If you can help feed the fabric into the feed dogs, while slightly holding up progress behind the presser foot, you can help keep the fabric from stretching nine ways to Sunday while seaming.
• I used a fusible knit tricot interfacing for the first time on this dress and I'm going to have to buy some serious yardage, both in light and medium weights.  Where has this stuff been all my life?  To make this dress in the future for the same client, I'll need to invest in the lighter weight tricot - by the time I sewed through the midriff, the interfacing, the midriff lining, the bodice (gathered), the midriff band (doubled) and the band interfacing, it was much thicker than I'd bargained for.  I think the lightweight might help to reduce that bulk.  
• I can sew an invisible zipper.  Like a PRO.

I mean, just LOOK - can you see it?  (Maybe I should dub this the No-See-Em zipper...)

Yes, ladies & gentlemen, this is not a back seam with a decorative pull-tab.

See?  I iz telling the truth!

It looks strangely forlorn on my dressform.  In real life,
it is a beautiful, cuddly-soft shade of coffee.
Amazingly enough, the manufacturer dubbed it "Potting Soil."
C'mon, couldn't their marketing panel come up with something a
little more....enticing?

My dress form has some serious cleavage, just not the right kind.

To see this amazing dress (not this particular one, but one that was sewn before today) in way-better-photographed-gorgeous-gloriously-pregnant-with-REAL-clevage mode:

http://julesfordmaternity.bigcartel.com/product/the-claire-dress

Now I'm off to cut out more dresses.....