A Burgundy Verity Dress

Hello, friends!

Wow!  I didn’t intend to ignore my blog for a month, but I’ve been busily sewing things that I can’t wait to share with you.  Today, I’m showing off my Moxie Verity Dress — a dress that fits in well with my fall/winter sewing and one that will get a ton of wear.

Source: Moxie Patterns

I was contacted by Rebecca of Moxie Patterns and asked if I’d like to test the Verity Dress pattern.  I don’t do very much pattern testing anymore unless it’s a pattern that I feel will fit well in my wardrobe and is something that can be sewn with fabrics from my stash.   I thought this pattern was cute and it has a retro 1960’s vibe, so I was in.   I wasn’t familiar with the Verity Dress nor Moxie Patterns, but apparently this pattern has been around for a few years.  It has been recently re-sized with a plus-size block and an expanded size range and that’s where pattern testers came in.

This dress isn’t my tester version.  My tester was made out of a burnout jersey and lined with a rayon jersey.  I was able to test the pattern out and share with Becca how it fit and see how I liked it.  However, I really hated that dress as the fabric was not my style (I had purchased it a few years ago to make something for a friend as a gift, but never got around to sewing it).  I wanted to sew another version up and here is the Verity that I will actually wear — and have worn already!

I used some burgundy rayon jersey for this dress that I purchased at JoAnn’s last winter.  Andie shared a link to a ModCloth dress (affiliate link) with a similar look as the Verity pattern and I decided to alter it to look a little more like my inspiration dress.  I sewed View A with the split cowl and added the sleeves from View C, swapping the circle skirt (which I did love in my tester version) for a gathered skirt.  I also made a self fabric button-on-band and added it to the waistline.

I sewed this in a size 4X grading to a 5X using the tester pattern version (not the final amended version).  I made the gathers in the skirt using the clear elastic method.  I had done a slight swayback adjustment to my tester version, but found that I didn’t need it, so I didn’t take any fabric out of the back bodice of this dress.  However, it kind of looks like I needed a little wedge taken out.  The only thing I can think of for that happening with this dress is that the fabric is lighter weight than with my tester version.  As I used two fabrics (treated as one) for my tester version, it kind of made that dress more like a ponte weight.

For some reason I missed printing out two pages of the pattern, which happened to be the split cowl pieces.  I couldn’t figure out which two pieces they were whilst looking at the PDF, so I studied the sample photos and the line drawings and drafted my own cowl.  Mine may or may not be like the pattern version, but this is me making it work and not wanting to re-print a huge PDF pattern and waste a bunch of paper.  Anyway, my thoughts are that the split cowl needs a more stable knit to look like the sample photos of it.

I also should have used some knit interfacing for my button-on-band at the waistband to make it a bit more stable, but I’m happy with the outcome. 🙂

Final thoughts:  This is a really nice and versatile pattern.  The instructions are really lengthy, so I didn’t print them out, but there is a condensed version for more experienced sewers that I followed.  The dress is a little more loose-fitting than other knit dresses that I’ve sewn (Colette Moneta and Cashmerette Appleton) that have negative ease, so the fit is a little bit different than what I’m used to.  The sleeves of the tester pattern have also been amended for the final version with gathers on the shoulders.

Disclaimer:  I received this pattern at no charge as a pattern tester.  This is my honest review.

Happy Sewing!

• Dress:  Moxie Verity Dress in rayon jersey, made by me
• Shoes:  Aerosoles
• Earrings:  BaubleBar