Astoria Knit Dress
I’ve had my eyes on the Style Arc Astoria Dress for a while but I don’t sew with knit much because I find it difficult to achieve a nice finish. I love the classy silhouette and the intriguing tie front, so I purchased it at the Black Friday sale.
I used a yellow spots cotton jersey fabric from Spotlight. It’s more like a cotton tee-shirt material, but I think this dress would work better with something light and slinky, like bamboo jersey. I’ll come back to this later!
Style Arc is known for its lack of detailed instructions, but the diagrams are clear and I had no problem figuring out how to put this dress together. I made a size 6 graded to 8 from the waist down, which is my usual adjustment for most patterns. I also shortened the skirt by about 3cm, and the length is just right.
This dress is quite easy and quick to whip up! It looks gorgeous from the front, but there is a lot of excess fabric at the back. It’s probably not an issue if I used something soft and slinky, as it would just drape on the body. This fabric has a bit more structure, so it doesn’t look great at all when I first tried it on.
A retrospective sway back adjustment is probably a long shot, so I decided to create a waist dart across the waistline at the back. The photo below shows the curve waist dart. Note I only marked one side of the dart.
After I stitched the dart, I added a piece of elastic to cinch it in. To determine the length of the elastic, I subtracted the amount I want to take in (about 5cm) from the full length of the waist dart. I cut the elastic a bit longer so I can grab it and stretch it as I sew.
And here’s the result! I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now I think it’s good enough. It’s certainly not the correct way to adjust this, but that’s what I could think of at the time. I’m happy with it as a retrospective fix.
The dress comes with a short and long sleeve version. I would most definitely try to make a winter version with some merino jersey, after making a proper swayback adjustment, of course!
