I wanted to replicate a dress I have for Open Hardware Summit (which I’m using as an excuse to start and finish a lot of projects, from heels to dress to earrings), but found it too difficult. Instead, I found this super-easy dress, which consists of just four pieces:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Infinity-Dress/
It is called an infinity dress because of all the ways you can wear it
My attempt came out more like a miniskirt due to some errors I made and lack of additional cloth. It also falls strangely on the front due to the lack of cloth pulling it down. So it goes.
To remedy it, since I have no more of that cloth and the store that sold it (Sew Low) is now closed (owner retired), I can 1) sew a different color underneath 2) wear a slip underneath 3) wear dark tights.
Additionally, the stretchy orange fabric causes… issues when it’s stretch thin. Ala wet tshirt problems. 🙁
It was all pretty straightforward. I’ll just document my measurements and cloth dimensions here.
- height 64.5”
- waist 31.5”
- chest center to armpit back 10.5”
- bottom of ribcage to top of breasts 6”
For the circle, my inner radius was 4.25” and my outer radius was 19.75”. Here is a picture (with the inner circle unfolded to show that the cloth is folded into quarters). I made the waist smaller than intended and it fit fine on my waist without falling down or being too small (although it did get on the smaller end of acceptable after I finished sewing everything to it).
I mark it, I used a piece of chalk and a tape measure, then anchored my right hand at the center of the circle and swung the tape around.
Unfolded
My rectangular cloth was 10” by 28”.
My long straps were 10.5” by 97”. I pinned them extensively down their entire length and the cutting was straightforward, although extremely tedious. The mat actually helped a lot, since I could line up the clean edges on the mat and actually see through the fabric to the white lines on the mat and mark down the entire length.
I used a single stitch, the straight stitch, no zigzag stitch needed (the second row on the machine), because the orange fabric was super stretchy.
The only part I found tricky* was which side to sew the rectangle (turned into cylinder) on onto the dress. I almost sewed it on the wrong side. It should be sewn with the top part of the right side is facing you and the bottom part of the right side is facing the mat, and the wrong side is facing itself on the inside. That way, when you put on the dress, the right side is facing out. The right side of the cylinder is facing the wrong side of the straps. The right side of the straps is facing the right side of the skirt. The bottom part of the right side of the skirt is facing the mat.
*I messed up on the skirt mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention and was listening to a podcast 🙁 I folded it in half and cut out the quarter circle, instead of folding it into quarters. Unfolded, I got two useless halves of cloth instead of a circular skirt.
All told it took me 8 hours to go from first reading the instructions to wearing the dress.
[the end]
