vogue 8379 and the fabric from hell

I definitely should have known better than to have anything to do with bright blue polyester jersey, but it was only $1.99 a yard (fabric.com) and I really needed to attempt the Vogue 8379 wrap dress that the internet loves so damn much. I desperately want to make peace with knit fabric, and I have almost no warm weather clothing that fits and is nursing-friendly, so the time seemed right.

This was mostly a success. The fit of the dress is pretty excellent; so that's not a problem. The seaming of the knit fabric was also not a problem, thanks to a ball point needle and a stretch stitch on my machine. I even managed to do something with the armholes in order to avoid sleeves (because I get overheated just thinking about polyester sleeves).

The problem was the hem: in short, it looks like shit. I was all set to do a twin needle hem, which is what the internet told me I needed to do, but the needles kept skipping stitches and in general leaving a hot mess all over the fabric. This is because the twin needles aren't ballpoint and this very slippery, snaggy fabric needs a ballpoint needle, period. I tried out the twin needle hem on a bunch of friendlier knits from the rag bag and it worked fine, so I really feel okay with blaming this particular fabric.

I'm not too broken up about it because I truly doubt that I'd wear a bright blue polyester dress out of the house no matter how awesome the hem was. As a dry run/first draft/confidence building experience, this was a success, and I have plans to make wrap dresses out of some brown bamboo jersey and orange cotton jersey.