Marfy Scuba Dress

I've been doing more sewing than blogging lately, which is probably a very good thing.  I fell in love with Marfy 3507, and decided I had to make it in a neoprene/scuba fabric.  I wanted a print rather than just a plain color and I found an unusual gray floral print at Elliott Berman Textiles.   



I'm not usually a floral person unless it's large and somewhat abstract, and this was small/medium and very traditional.  The style is traditional as well, a coat dress, but the zippers definitely update it.  I did a lot of alteration, and ended up making a trial garment which I didn't hem but is otherwise finished, out of a heavy dark green knit.  I adjusted the front waist size smaller and went on to begin anew with the neoprene.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the fabric was a dream to sew.  It's got body galore, and pretty much did whatever I wanted it to.  No ravelling, no 'squirming' around, it just stayed put.  It did require understitching on the collar and front edges. I used Pam's Pro-Tricot Fusible Interfacing on the collar and the lapel point areas, and that was all the interfacing it needed.  

 

 You can probably see that I used some interesting zippers for this dress.  These are Coats & Clark's Cutwork Zippers and they were very easy to apply.  The only problem I had was that they only came in 2 sizes, 7" and 22".

I ended up using the 7" zippers instead of flaps for the faux pockets.  They worked perfectly. 
However, the 22" zipper was too short to be both as high as I needed it at the neckline and as low as it needed to go on the skirt hem to make the dress really wearable.   So, I took another zipper and installed it from the bottom up, stitching the lower one over the upper when I got to the join.  It's not really noticeable when worn, especially with the somewhat busy fabric.  I like to have it unzipped from the bottom for a few inches for walking ease. 

The dress fits like a glove and is very comfortable, if also really, really warm to wear.  It will be a great winter dress, although as soon as we were done with the photos, I knew I wouldn't be wearing these shoes with it.

  The color is not good on the side view, but I thought the shaping was important to see.  I think this is a great basic pattern and it would be very easy to add a buttonhole extension to it, although the zippers are fun.  Once the alteration work has been done, I like to reuse a pattern if I can.