DvF Wrap Dress

It is sew fabulous

**This post contains affiliate links.**

I present, my wearable muslin (or toile, if you’re fancy), for my DvF wrap dress:

Materials, etc:

• Diane Von Furstenberg 50th anniversary wrap dress sewing pattern (V2000)

• Speckled fabric that Mom grabbed for me from the West Valley College “free stuff table”

• Mood Mystery Fabric Box for bright orange lining

• Brown cotton jersey knit from Hart’s Fabric

• Baublebar triple Jack O’Lantern earrings

• Baroque pearl necklace from Banana Republic

I’ve been itching to sew this fabric into a dress ever since Mom handed it to me, aaaaaages ago. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough fabric to do the whole dress, so I pinned all of the pieces before starting to cut, and sure enough, it was short.

I ordered 3 yards of the chocolate colored cotton jersey from Hart’s Fabric in Santa Cruz, and it turned out to be a perfect match.

… but if I had ordered 3 1/2 yards of it, I would have had exactly enough for everything, but 3 yards meant it was too short for the belt, no matter how I tried working around (including doing one side in the speckles, and one in the brown), but no luck. I ordered more.

I did a paper fitting of the traced pattern (top size 20, bottom size 24), and made the following adjustments:

• Shortened the bodice by 2”

• Shortened the skirt by 3”

• Added lining to the skirt (because my commercial wrap dresses cling something FIERCE)

• Changed it to a half-sleeve, because that’s my favorite length

The adjustments looked really weird on the paper pattern, but matched on both Cunégonde (my customized dress form), and my sloper, and ultimately, on my body.

I ran into a couple of bumps along the way, but with the help of my trusty nose hair trimmer (which I use instead of a seam ripper, because it’s much faster and easier on the fabric), I took parts of this dress apart three or four times, and made the necessary changes on the traced paper pattern.

(I feel like I need to make it clear that my nose hair trimmer is used exclusively as a sewing tool, but that’s only because Andrew ordered one for me to keep me from continually stealing his.)

Things I realized, while ripping out and redoing:

• Make sure the pattern markings line up after making adjustments on the paper pattern pieces

• Check the lengths of the fronts and backs to make sure they are the same

• Check waist size on the top against the waist size on the bottoms/skirt

• Make sure waist lines are parallel/straight

Mom wanted to help, and she came and did some pinning with me; her fine motor is just fine, she pinned beautifully, exactly, along the lines like it was no big deal. (She is dealing with expressive aphasia, and the more things she is able to do, the more we can narrow down where she needs help.)

She really loves hearing about my sewing, and will generally come and join me for a bit at my sewing table.

As far as updates, Mom has good days, and days that are harder, but it seems to me like she’s improving every day. For example, we’ll be doing something, or looking at something, and she’ll say a short sentence, which is contextually correct, perfectly clearly.

She is working really hard at getting better- she’s doing the physical therapy, the occupational therapy, and the speech therapy with the therapists, but also with the rest of the family as well so that she’s not *only* doing one hour of each per week. She is incredibly determined, and we are all so proud of her.

Competely unrelated: I was watching Escape at Dannemora while I was sewing today, and Patricia Arquette 100% is wearing a Hitofude Cardigan.