Stashbusting sweatshirt dress

Oh my goodness, I've been so tired this week, I've started working 75% instead of 50%. I intended to post about my sweatshirt dress days ago, I even had the photos and everything, but there was just no energy for it... Well, better late than never I guess, so here I am.

In the last issue of 2012 of Allt om handarbete Sömnad, a Swedish sewing magazine, there were a lot of dresses and raight away I liked the sweatshirt dress. I didn't have sweatshirt fabric but some heavier jersey, which I later on realized was a double knit (I have never understood when others have been writing about double knits what they were, but now I do after seeing my own fabric. It's kind of two jersey fabrics stuck together.) I traced the pattern for size EU46 which is was I normally wear, cut and sew the dress together and this is what I ended up with...

 Yep! That's a TENT, ladies and gentlemen!

In these photos, underneath the dress(?) I'm wearing sweat pants, a longsleeved t-shirt and a wool cardigan and it doesn't even show... and it's also too long.

Some work had to be dont before I could wear this in public. I had to take in the sleeves the sides and make a sort of dart down the center back. I also unpicked the hem and cut off about 2-3 inches off the length.

 

Here's the dress looking somewhat better. I lined the hood with turquoise cotton jersey, which I also used for the pockets and I found a turquoise zipper in the right length. (Yep, it's the same jersey I used to underline the Tiramisu dress. I bought the fabric at a charity shop it was 4-5 metres for about £5 and it has been very useful!)

The dress is super comfy and I've worn it three times in the last week, wearing it right now actually. The fabric is rather warm so the dress has been great now that it's been so cold here in Sweden.

Don't know if you can see the long dart in the center back, but it's there...

 

 Quite a difference from the first photos, the dress is still big (and comfy) but it's not a tent anymore. After the dress was finished, or I thought it was finished, I wore it to work one day and realised that the sleeves just were too long, something had to be done. So I cut them off! and made new, longer cuffs, which is very cute, I think.

Not the best photo, but I hope the new cuff is visible. Now the dress is finally finished. So between this dress and the Tiramisu dress I've had some bad luck lately when it comes to fit and size. Am I really not as big as I think or what's going on? Both the Tira and the sweatshirt dress were too big to start with and I had to size them down considerably before they were ok. I have chosen size after my measurements, but still ended up with too large garments. Hmm.... strange...

Anyway, I'm working on starting some new projects.and I will also be back with the result of the Stashbusting sewalong.

Bye for now,

Johanna