What makes a hol­i­day even bet­ter than any ordi­nary day? Design­ing your very own out­fit for the day!

As much as I loved cre­at­ing my East­er out­fits over the years, I nev­er attempt­ed to cre­ate my own Christmas/holiday par­ty dress­es.  Typ­i­cal­ly I’m swamped with work and usu­al­ly wear slacks because of the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures! So regard­less of those things, this year I made it my goal to start & fin­ish a dress for my all my hol­i­day festivities!

 Recent­ly, some­one asked me to sew a cus­tom gar­ment that called for vel­vet. I’m a new­bie when it comes to sewing vel­vet, so I want­ed to cre­ate a vel­vet dress for myself before I attempt­ing the cus­tom order.

I remem­ber most of the vel­vet sewing and press­ing tech­niques my past men­tors passed on to me, so I was­n’t afraid to dive in. How­ev­er, one of the tech­niques was impos­si­ble for me do because I don’t own a nee­dle board. (A nee­dle board is a spe­cial iron­ing board for pressing/steaming vel­vet. It keeps the nap of the vel­vet from flat­ten­ing.)

Just before my fab­ric shop­ping trip, I received the month­ly edi­tion of Bur­da Style 
and saw this pat­tern! It imme­di­ate­ly caught my eye, so I decid­ed to make a short ver­sion of this dress using some of the black vel­vet I bought.

How dif­fi­cult was it to cut the velvet?

~I did­n’t find it dif­fi­cult. How­ev­er, I was extra care­ful with lay­ing the pat­tern pieces and mak­ing sure the direc­tion of the pile was the same for each pat­tern piece. 

How dif­fi­cult was it to sew the velvet?

~ Vel­vet is some­times expen­sive (since they are all import­ed to the U.S.) and since I was­n’t look­ing for some­thing expen­sive nor long-last­ing, I found this clear­ance black vel­vet. The vel­vet was low qual­i­ty and it cer­tain­ly did not feel or look as lux­u­ri­ous as some of the vel­vets I’ve seen in high-end tex­tile boutiques.

Because of the low qual­i­ty, I think the vel­vet was tougher to work with. First, the vel­vet did not sew smooth­ly through the machine and required me to use LOTS of pins (which is tedious and time-con­sum­ing). Sec­ond, the vel­vet was VERY unfor­giv­ing.  I orig­i­nal­ly sewed a Mal­tese rib­bon along the hem of the dress. When I decid­ed to seam rip out the rib­bon, I dam­aged the vel­vet and you can still see the stitch lines at the hem of the dress 🙁

Would I sew this pat­tern again?

Absolute­ly!

I love this dress pat­tern! It requires more time and fab­ric than your typ­i­cal shift dress pat­tern, but it’s total­ly worth it! I plan on mak­ing more dress­es with this pattern!

When I first decid­ed to use the Bur­da Style 
dress pat­tern, I did­n’t know that the top bodice was 2 pieces (+ fac­ings), so at first I was a lit­tle con­fused when I first start­ed cut­ting & sewing.

The top lay­er is not attached to the skirt. So one night, I wore the dress with the top lay­er rolled up! (It made the dress look less boxy and more sleek.)

The back bot­tom black poly­ester bodice lay­er has an invis­i­ble zip­per, while the top vel­vet lay­er is open in the back. I  added a snap to the top lay­er at the waist­line because I want­ed to add a but­ton my dad brought back from Malta.

How did you steam/press the vel­vet if you did­n’t have a nee­dle board?

~I’m extreme­ly tempt­ed to buy a nee­dle board. It was awful not hav­ing one!

I skipped most of the pressing!

How­ev­er, I real­ly need­ed to press out the zip­per because some of the vel­vet moved while sewing (even with the zip­per bast­ed in)! I tried dif­fer­ent things to care­ful­ly press the zip­per seams . But in the end noth­ing real­ly worked and I ruined a patch of the vel­vet along the waistband.