Long abandoned V1558

I build up piles of crafts supplies and then, every so often, I can’t face looking at them anymore and have a good sort out. Last August bank holiday, I reached that point with my overflowing repairs/alterations/UFOs baskets, and rationalised them down to a single basket (which I have since mostly ignored, but will, hopefully, eventually work through).

Sorting through the baskets, I found some really easy to complete projects which had been waiting in the basket for a ridiculously long time, including a top which only needed one seam repaired, and a charity-shop-purchase dress which had a couple of small (cigarette burn) holes which needed patching. I also found this dress waiting for me, almost complete.

This is Vogue V1558, a Rachel Comey designed knit dress with a pleated bodice and skirt, voluminous raglan sleeves and a high, round neck. All that was left for me to do when I retrieved it from the UFOs basket was to attach the bodice to the skirt, add elastic to the sleeve cuffs, and hem the skirt. We travelled to Paris on holiday a few days later, and this was the quickest and easiest of pre-holiday projects.

Due to the long delay between starting and finishing this dress, I don’t have a strong memory of the construction process, but I did skip the zip, which was unnecessary in this stretchy knit fabric, and I took the waist in by approximately two inches, as the pattern contains a lot of ease. I bought the fabric in Ho Chi Minh City in a fabric district in the Cho Lon area for less than £3 per metre, when we visited back in 2018.

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