Maroon Alistra

The Alistra Dress was envisaged as combining the great fit of our knit Whitlam Skirt and our knit Tarlee T-shirt, but it’s not a dupe of either patterns.

All of them have curved centre-back seams which either encourage booty hugging, or eliminate the pooling in the small of the back, wrap around the very typical curved upper back/lower neck or all of the above.

I’ve made 3 Alistra Dresses- one black one with the funnel neck, and one pink and red colourblocked Patreon Pattern Bonus one and one pink ribbed one that didn’t even make it to the blog because it looked so Pyjama-y to me.You know I have lots of feelings about black (wish it looked good on me, never manage to style it when I do get it into my wardrobe), and I really love the pink and red one but I feel like the casual look of the cotton knit makes this feel less dressy than I want it to.

This stretch viscose spandex is 50% off at The Fabric Store and is a great example of differing descriptions of stretch. I would describe this as a 4-way stretch (8% spandex and lots of give and recovery), but the website lists it as a 2-way stretch (which is how I would describe 100% merino jersey…. so, a knit that isn’t very stretchy (especially vertically)). This is definitely very stretchy… too stretchy as it turns out.

My plan was that the viscose would give a fancier look to the dress, a little bit of extra drape so that it would be great for evenings out. I’ve decided that I really need to shop fabrics in person, because I have 0% ability to predict how a fabric will work for my face when looking at pics online. Fortunately, this one was available in store so I went in and took a draped selfie in natural light- my goal for 2024 is to only sew things that make my eyes look very green. Unlike all of my previous versions, this colour is in my colour season and makes my eyes pop (although it’s not really coming across like that in the photos).

I made a Size G at the bust blended out to a H through the high belly and hip. I think that was probably a mistake when I first chose those sizes, and has remaining a mistake through 4 iterations of the dress. My bust measurement has fluxuated quite a bit recently and I probably need to print the pattern with a Size E or Size F at the bust.

I forget that the Alistra pattern isn’t exactly the Tarlee T-shirt, which has the perfect length sleeves for me. Here, the sleeves are much longer and because I have to shorten them quite a bit, it leaves them a bit baggy at the opening (compared to the rest of the sleeve) if I don’t also slim down the forearm. I removed 5″ from sleeve (which would have otherwise covered my whole hands) to make it bracelet-ish length (I really like the sleeve-length of this tee) and slimmed down the sleeves from the underarm to about 2″ in from the seam near the wrist opening (so 4″ removed in total). Probably that was too much.

I also removed 1.5″ from centre front of my neckband pattern piece and then a smidge more when I was cutting the pattern piece out. Next time I’ll remove extra as I still have some extra fabric in the centre of the neckband which is exacerbated by my concave chest and narrow shoulders.

The outcome

I was sewing this up for an evening outing, but I didn’t end up wearing this as I hate it. It didn’t end up looking elevated like I’d hoped, but quite nightgown like. The fabric is lovely and stretchy but the stretch and the weight pulled the dress down so it’s extra long (and strangely longer on one side, so I guess my grain was slightly off during cutting). I chose the best pictures for the blog, but the soft knit draped over everything meaning you can see the texture of the lace on my bra, the line of the fold-over elastic on my undies, and every other texture it can possibly cling to on its way down.

The positive is that this was a very quick project and the fabric was on sale, and it will likely become a very lovely t-shirt (hoping the shortened length will mitigate some of the bad behaviour of the fabric)! Longest blog post ever and saddest ending to date?