Portfolio Dress Sew Along: Day 5

Welcome to the 5th and final day of the Portfolio Dress Sew Along hosted by Gwenny Penny and Pickup Some Creativity!

Today Chris and I will be sharing our finished dresses and some additional tips and tricks we learned along the way. If you are just joining us, click here for Day 1, here for Day 2, here for Day 3, and here for Day 4 of the sew along.

Time to share my finished dress with you. I'm not much of a model, and I hate having my picture taken. We have very few pictures of me because I'm usually the one behind the camera. I've been nervous about having to pose for the final product, but here goes nothing...

This is my favorite picture (probably because you can't see me :)...

I'm pleasantly surprised with this dress. I love the pockets, and the cotton lawn Lisette fabric is so light and airy and comfortable.

OK, enough about me, let's move on to...

Portfolio Dress Pattern Tips and Tricks:

• A sewing gauge is really helpful, not just for this project but for any sewing project.

• I use a water soluble disappearing ink pen for my pattern markings. When I'm done with the marks, I just use a damp washcloth to wipe the ink off the fabric. My pen is bright pink so it really stands out against the fabric.

• Don't be afraid to use lots of pins. No one will think any less of you for using 50 pins to attach your sleeve or neck band. Pinning gives me confidence when I'm sewing.

• I could not get the button loops to turn using the method described in the pattern. I used Chris's idea instead. It was much easier and still looks great.

• I had difficulty with two parts of the pattern. The first was Step 9, attaching the side front and pocket (piece 3) to the pocket facing and front (pieces 4 and 1). My problem was with the pinning. I originally pinned all three pieces 1, 3, and 4 together. You actually need to pin pieces 1 and 3 together until you come down to the pockets, then pin pieces 3 and 4 together without piece 1. The second difficult part for me was Step 28, attaching the neck band to the garment. It took me about five tries to get everything to line up, which meant removing my 800 pins every time I started over, but I'm glad I took the time to get it right. Make sure you clip the neckline of the garment and attach the neck band at the staystitching.

• Pay attention to changes in stitch length. When you go from regular stitching to basting or gathering then back to regular stitching, it's easy to forget to change the stitch length on your machine between steps. The same goes for changing thread colors when switching from working on the main fabric to the contrast fabric and back.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated or just read along this week. I learned so much over the past five days, not only about sewing and patterns but also about blogging and sew alongs. Make sure you check out our Flickr group. I can't wait to see how everyone's dresses turned out! Chris and I will be featuring dresses next Friday, May 6th, so you have another week to finish up and add your dresses to the Flickr group. If you don't have a Flickr account, please feel free to email me a picture of your dress so I can add it to the feature post. We'd like to include everyone!

A special thank you to Chris for being my partner in crime on this project. I wouldn't have gotten through this without you :)