When I found out my sister-in-law was (about to be) engaged, I spotted a certain cherry rayon at the store and really couldn’t help myself. I’m a sucker for cherries: eating them, wearing them or otherwise. And I don’t wear a lot of prints, but who doesn’t want to wear a cherry dress on a warm summer day?
I’m funny about dresses though. It’s often too breezy or cold to be comfortable in them, and wearing a cardigan overtop just isn’t “me”. So to account for always being on the cold side of life, I decided to make a sleeved dress for the summer wedding. Why not shorten the sleeves of Cardamome dress pattern I had already succeeded at making? Oh yeah and, how about learning to interline and add lining to the dress because it may not be as opaque as I would like? Sure I can do that! So I picked up some bright red fabric with a similar drape, though it has a warmer hand than rayon, and a bit more billowy. It was close enough.
Interlining
To make the bodice more opaque, I cut all the bodice pieces as well as the inside color stand out of my red lining fabric. I placed the red lining on top of the cherry fabric piece and hand stitched them together all around the edges. Using the iron as need to press them flat together. When you interline something, you are basically stitching the lining fabric to the fashion fabric together so that they behave as one piece when you construct your garment. It takes a bit of extra time, but it’s fairly straight forward.
The awkward part in all of this was that I cut the bodice as one piece with the skirt (so that the shirred waist would fit more comfortably). So when interlining, I left the waist area open and only stitched those parts together when I did the shirring.
Lining
The side seams of the dress go from interlined above the waist, to lined below the waist. It was a bit tricky to figure it out and I can’t quite remember how I did it, but somehow I separated the red lining from the cherry fabric just underneath the shirred waist. I finished each skirt separately, and added red inseam pockets to the cherry dress. The hemming was the absolute worst. As the dress was hard to press with all the layers everywhere, and I wanted a little peep of red to show underneath the cherry fabric, but not too much, and I wanted it to look even! Lol. It’s ‘OK’.
In the End
I’m proud of how it turned out 😀 I got to wear it to the wedding on a beautiful summer day. It’s actually one of the most comfortable items in my closet! Not normally a person to wear red, this is my chance and I’m taking it!
I also wear it over leggings, and when I’m feeling really serious school teachery, I wear it under my black sweater 😛
Happy Sewing!
