Spring flowers and the wintry dress of doom

I’m still sewing my winter dress though it definitely seems to be spring here. Snowdrops, crocuses, birds singing, that sort of thing…

The dress has so far been an almighty pain in the arse to sew together, and it feels like it’s taking forever.  I’m trying to think of it as (another) learning experience.

Things I have so far learnt are that:

1. Working on dark fabric with a fine check requires a very good light. I’ve managed to match the colour of the thread so closely to the fabric that I can hardly see it – this looks good but makes sewing (and unpicking) a trifle difficult.
2. There’s not much point in making test samples of bound seam finishes with different widths of bias strip if I then forget what I did and cut all the bias strips 2cm wide instead of 2.5cm. I even wrote a note to remind myself but forgot to look at it…
3. Either my concealed zipper foot is rubbish or I’m not using it properly. Concealed zips don’t look great when not concealed at all and can’t easily be passed off as a design feature. I used the regular zipper foot in the end and the zip is now mostly concealed.
4. Checked fabrics are much more unforgiving to sew than plain fabrics. Next time I think I’ll go for a plain fabric.

I’m getting to the point of being so fed up of seeing the dress that I can’t imagine actually wearing it, which does tend to make me question why exactly I’m sewing it.

Probably best not to go too far into this line of questioning and just get on with finishing the damn thing.