Finished for FESA : a Goth(ish) Moneta

...or the dress that took a long time coming!

No mirror picture this time, I thought I'd take advantage of the natural light coming from my bedroom's window. I still prefer to see picture of worn garments, but at least I managed to get something that's not blurry and gloomy-looking! 

This is Colette's Moneta. The bodice is plain black jersey from Mod'Tissus (local fabric shop), the skirt was made with this lace print jersey :

Source : Place des Tissus

Not many alterations there, just raised the back neckline to make it more office/special professional event-appropriate (I also love the original back neckline, though!) and made the skirt 5 cm longer (only to shorten it in the end because I thought the dress looked frumpy. Duh). However, depending on the fabric, the next version might need an armhole/neckline adjustment to prevent it from gaping.

Everything went quite smoothly until I got to the shirring part. I first started using a normal foot + narrow zigzag stitch, but the shirring looked uneven as fuck. Then I tried gathering with the "string technique" (which Lauren explains here) and my gathers looked OK, but I thought it would look super bulky as I had to sew the elastic on top of the gathers. Finally, I rummaged through my sewing machine's notions compartment and dug out this roller foot. In addition to that, I did lots of matching marks on my elastic and skirt waistband...and eventually got something correct!

As if that was not enough to slow me down, I also broke my twin needle (that's what happens when you forget to check stitch settings) on a Sunday, and therefore had to wait one more week till I could buy a new needle.

Which I broke, too, the week after (fortunately this was at the end of the hem).

Then I thought my skirt was too long, so I bought a 3rd (and a 4th, better safe than sorry...) twin needle (which I didn't break, yay!) to make a shorter hem.

And finally, I got something I like! 

However, in spite of these little problems, the dress itself was really an easy make and it's very comfy! Chances are I'll make more than one!