My Giselle Wearable Muslin

As a featured stitcher for Selfish Sewing Week at Imagine Gnats, I got to choose a pattern from a talented independent designer and fabric from Art Gallery Fabrics to make my garment.  You guys, I felt like such a VIP, perusing the pattern choices and pages of beautiful fabrics to decide what I would make for myself!  I settled on the Giselle Dress from Kate & Rose Patterns, which I will tell you more about in my post on Imagine Gnats on Sunday, 3/15, but first I thought I'd show you my trial run of this pattern.

Making a muslin means trying out the pattern to check for fit before cutting into your "real" fabric, but a wearable muslin means you hope it turns out well enough to actually be worn!  This worked out for me in this case--after making this dress, there were adjustments that I wanted to make before cutting into my Art Gallery fabric, but I will still definitely wear this version!

This fabric was a risk for me.  It is a voile, so it was a good choice for the muslin since I would be working with a voile in the real version, but the print is kind of wacky:

It's little bundled-up people, maybe ice skating or something?  And the gray/peach/olive/light blue color is not my usual either.  But when I saw it at the fabric store I couldn't stop thinking about it, and it was only 100 yen per meter, so I brought it home, not knowing if I would ever use it.  I was able to get this whole dress out of just 2 meters (just barely), so if it didn't work out at least it wasn't a big investment!

Anyway, if I'm feeling shy about the print, I can always wear a cardigan:

The dress ties in the back:

But you guys--do NOT skip the recommended stay-stitching on the neckline!

Wonky!

For my final version, I adjusted the bodice so that the seams sit lower on my chest, which I like better.  I do love the sleeves in this pattern, which was one of the main reasons I chose it--I have been adding sleeves to everything to get me through the winter, and it seems like most of the patterns I had on hand had pretty blousy sleeves, which didn't look flattering with some of the looser tunic shapes I was trying to add them to.  These have plenty of room for movement but a nice slim silhouette, and I really like the banding at the bottom.

In the book I'm currently reading, the main character referred to 3/4 sleeves as "the least flattering sleeve," but I beg to differ!  I love 3/4 sleeves!

So, until my featured post on Imagine Gnats on Sunday, this will be my final Selfish Sewing post of Spring 2015!  I managed to finish 3 dresses and a top--not bad!  Here's a preview of the fabric I chose--it's called Aves Chatter Dim from Bonnie Christine's Winged line for Art Gallery Fabrics:

Spoiler alert--it came out SO GOOD!