Just Walk-Away

I swear - this thing is This close |--| to being a wadder!  And the horrible part is I think my problems are self inflicted!

I did a muslin - made some corrections and thought, ok - this isn't going to be too bad - and forged ahead.  I cut the dress, sewed it, and tried it on and everything looked... way too big!  I putzed around with it for a while and ended up taking it up an inch in the shoulders to make it look right.  After that I thought it was just a small adjustment in the sides (from the back) and I would be ready to put on the bias tape.  Last night I rolled through putting on the yards and yards of bias tape (I used almost every inch of the 9 yards I bought), added some snaps and hooks, wrapped the dress around me and... somehow it had grown a size larger! What the...

So, what could the problem be you ask?

It call comes down to fabric choice.  I was determined to make this dress out of blue check w/red binding like the picture.  But, I couldn't find the right blue check anywhere!  I ended up finding something 'close enough', as in the color and pattern was right but the fabric wasn't the soft durable cotton I was looking for.  Instead it's something else - almost a cheep taffeta.  It frays like nothing I've ever seen and doesn't stretch per se - it WARPS.  Once it's been pulled in a certain direction it says in that direction.  Every stitch I put in it seems to turn it to mush and the fact that I sewed it TWICE to put the bindings on... well you get the idea.  The edges on the grain (like the front of the dress) seem to have grown about 1/2 an inch.  edges on the bias (like the wrap around edges) have grown even more!  I was almost in tears last night and hubby had to force me to put the thing down and come to bed.

the worse part - I was worried about this fabric from the start and I had actually bought a soft white cotton to interline the entire dress because I had feeling it wasn't going to hold up to the application.  But, then I got in a hurry - figured cutting the dress twice - once in fashion fabric and once in interlining - would take too long and.. and..  Yeah - to quote a wise man, a stitch in time saves nine.  I should have listened to my gut.

the good news is that I'm done sewing, it's all bound and thus it should stop 'growing'.  That is, until I hem the stupid thing!