vogue 9668 v2.0 – progress

i’ve been working on my second v9668, aka the summer version. what should have been a fairly straight-forward project (i mean, i JUST finished the first one pretty recently, so the construction is very fresh in my mind) has turned into a huge headache and a lot of wow-i-sure-made-this-as-difficult-as-possible-huh.

this is the fabric i’m using.

it’s a lovely stretch cotton with a touch of sateen. GORGEOUS.

i went ahead and cut out all my pattern pieces (including the white bodice lining), stitched a million darts, stabilized the neckline & interfaced the midriff. started to piece the bodice together and had the brilliant idea to pipe every seam with hot pink piping. nice, right?

then i went to the fabric store and, although they had a thousand colors of piping, none of it matched the hot pink in my dress. they did, however, have a nice piece of cotton sateen in the *perfect* shade of pink, and it was on sale. yay! bought some teeny cording & started making piping.

i hate making piping, but i digress.

when i started sewing on the piping, i realized i didn’t have any more pink thread. sooo i used white. in hindsight, probably not the smartest idea. now i have to be super careful to sew over the basting threads.

oh, and i forgot to prewashing the piping fabric until after i sewed it on. cotton stretch sateen doesn’t shrink too much, RIGHT?? oh god. i’m never washing this dress, never ever.

once i got all the piping on there, i realized it would have been in my best interest to put the bodice together first and then insert the piping. whoops. at least all my piping is perfectly matched at the seams. well, mostly. right.

anyway, i’ve got as far as the bodice + piping. the lining is assembled, but i haven’t dropped it in the bodice yet. i was going to do it yesterday, but, ugh. man.

although i will go as far as to say that i think the piping will be worth the trouble. the pattern is a little busy & the piping really draws out the lines of the design.

here’s where i had to join the piping at every seam. talk about a pain in the butt!

crappy picture, but i stabilized the neckline with silk organza.

i went ahead and put the skirt together as well, since it is cut on the bias and it has to hang for 24 hours before i can hem it. at the rate i’m going, it will hang for about 2 weeks but ehh what can you do.
instead of lining the skirt, i pieced it together with french seams.

and now, let’s talk about my crochet project!
i’m pulling out the big guns & working on an afgan. my granny squares will be in these three colors:

one color each. not sure how i’ll arrange them; either radiating from white in the middle to the darkest at the outside, or maybe diagonal stripes, idk yet.

have i posted this yet? i learned how to crochet a rose:

so i’m going to scatter those all over the finished afgan. here are my colors:

the green is a lot lighter in person. i want my roses to be a little washed-out.

and here is my first granny square for said project:

it’s 4.5″ square, so i am going to need between 250-400 squares, depending on the finished size.

soo basically: if we are friends and you want to hang out, i will be bringing my crocheting with me. even if we are at the bar.

Tags: crochet, dress, piping, roses afgan, vogue, work in progress