V8070 review - an easy Vogue pattern. Yeah, right.

In between daily hospital visits, I've been making a silk dress for my friend to wear to the PTA's May Ball. We chose Vogue's V8070, which I bought used on Ebay and which just happened to be in my friend's size rather than in my own much larger one. I also had some beautiful maroon silk in the stash, which I thought would make up beautifully into this dress. I had tried to make a silk skirt several years ago and it was a dismal failure but I've learned a lot since then so I wasn't expecting much trouble from this Easy pattern. Ha!

If only I'd actually read the back of the envelope before blithely getting out the rotary cutter. All the clues were there: lined, bias cut inset, no provision for above waist adjustment. And the Vogue instructions were less than helpful. I discovered these excellent tips on sewing bias cut fabrics on Threads. And Threads also have a wonderful video on conquering inset corners, something I only realised I needed to watch after I had sewn the lining.

Thanks to the Threads video, the inset corners on the shell came out beautifully. I only wish Threads had produced a video on how to sew an inset cut on the grain into a bias cut dres. I did it three times and there's still a bit of a ripple along the bias. So frustrating! You can't see it so much in the photo, but it's definitely there.

Now I can start on my own dress, which is also a Vogue pattern. Vogue describes it as 'Average', so heaven only knows what a mess I'll make of it! It's unlined but I'm using Vietnamese silk which has a crisp hand but is pretty lightweight, so I'll need to do a lining, and needless to say, I'm doing version B, which is not cut on the bias!