Madam Mix-a-Nettie

How did I come to decide that I was going to make a Nettie when I generally tend to shy away from hip hugging garments? Try and keep up if you can:

I had been given some Spoondollars for my birthday last year, and really wanted to get this fabric (Erin, if you ever have a Dog Lady Sewing Challenge, you know what fabric I'll be wearing at the end!). I had originally planned on just buying it as a woven, but after making a knit project (to be blogged), and getting a bit frustrated with a woven dress PIP, I thought that it would be great to try the Moneta instead. But three yards of fabric at Spoonflower would be roughly $80 and I didn't want to just fly into a knit dress pattern without trying it out first. Cue to my local fabric store closing (everything is currently 50% off!!!!!), and I found a nice navy Ponte knit that I could use to essentially make a wearable muslin with. At this time, I was also interested in making a whale dress for an upcoming protest at Marineland. Again, I wanted to make it a knit, but because this wasn't the fabric that I had been coveting for like a year, I didn't want to drop $80 for 3 yards on it. So I thought maybe I could make it a Nettie since that would reduce the yardage to 2 yards instead of 3. Worried that I would need a muslin before doing that, I scrapped my original plans and used the navy as a wearable muslin for the Nettie (which basically turned out great so it is not really, in my mind, in the "muslin" category). Will the whale dress actually happen? That remains to be seen. (It may end up being a skirt, but we'll see). What about the dog dress. Hells yes! Just not rightnow.

I cut the dress as a 6 in the bust and arms, and graded to a 14 on the hip (see bottom of post). I think next time I might just grade from an 8 to a 14. It fits really nice and snug but, even after pre-washing the fabric, after a day of wearing this, my armpits are blue because it is so snug.

I chose the high neck, medium scoop back. I already have some ideas about a low scoop back version in burgundy with a tartan bow (like Tilly's version) to match the hubby's kilt, a t-shirt version, and maybe a striped version or colour-blocked version using the navy and one of my stripe Ponte knits I have sitting around (P.S. fabric store closing sales are really, really, really bad if you are trying to be good about using your stash).

Although I did stitch the binding down, I didn't stitch some of it close enough to the end so I'll have to go over it. No biggie.

I love that with a blazer or cardigan I can wear this to work, with runners and a sweater I can run to the grocery store in fashionable comfort, but with the right accessories I can wear it to a wedding or date night with Trev. Tres versatile!

Overall, I'm super freakin' happy with this make. It was super easy to make, I probably did all the sewing in about 2 hours over two or three days. The more I make knits, the less I want to make wovens. (And when I do make wovens, the more frustrated I get while making them!) There will definitely be more of these in the works real soon.

Looking at this picture now, I can really see just how tight it is in the pits. Yikes!

Remember that talk we had the other week about photo faces? I'm going to leave you with the best "modelling" I have to offer:

Please share: have you tried Nettie yet?

{See above post}