FO Dress, Me-Made Wardrobe, Notebook of a Beginner Sewist, Sewing, Shop Wiksten

Notebook of a Beginner Sewist: Wiksten FO

Stefanie

Evening! How’re you today? Me? Good. It helped that I had gone to bed earlier last night; I need to do that more.

Drumroll…

the 16 yo was the photographer

Ta-da! The Wiksten Shift in its full shift form.

You should have seen me earlier. I tried out this velcro roller set to give my hair oomph after my shower. My husband had a good laugh; my 8th grader thought I looked weird.

I finished this WIP yesterday. I had to redo the front neck facing because when I was topstitching it down on front, there were a few places where the chambray had puckered. I learned I should stretch out the fabric on the left side to keep that from happening.

Wearing it with the belt that was the last item to finish Sunday. I only had success with this piece after misinterpreting the directions twice – doh! This is probably how I’ll usually wear the Wiksten.

Yesterday when I had tried it on, my husband said it’d look good with a red belt. What do you think?

My 2-Cents

  1. It’s a well-written pattern that has clear and easy directions to follow.
  2. It’s a roomy piece that is comfortable to wear, put on, and take off,
  3. I love how there is a variety of fabric choices that can create different vibes of style.
    • I’ve been eyeing one that was made with vertical striped fabric and I loved how with the pockets, the stripes were placed the other way.

For Beginners

  1. Google this pattern and read a couple of blog reviews to get a sense of the pattern, how it fits on others, and the opinions of sewists on its process.
    • For example: I am short – 5′, 0.75″ tall. I wanted to make the long dress because of the side slits and belt. The model is actually very tall in the pattern.
    • When I measured where the long dress would hit my body, it was at the top of my ankles. I wanted it around my knees and found the short dress hit in that area.
    • This measurement check saved me from wasting fabric as I would have had to cut off around 10″ from the long dress pattern pieces.
  2. If you don’t want to go through lots of paper and ink, try a copy shop.
    • I loved the convenience of the process and the ease of having one, big piece of paper to cut out from. To me, it’s worth the money.
  3. Try chambray for one of your dresses.
    • This fabric was wonderful to work with even though I couldn’t zig zag on it with a single layer of chambray.
  4. Don’t try to make this dress in a day; break it down into parts. This will save your sanity, your time, and you will learn a lot from each part’s process.
  5. Topstitch with a longer stitch length – the results will come out cleaner and nicer.

Okay my friends, thank you for droppin in and hangin out for a bit with me in this post. Take care and TTYS.

Published by Stefanie

Veteran educator to SAHM. PTA experienced. Wife. Mom. Blogger. Knitter. Cardmaker. Beginning sewist. Newbie podcaster.

28 thoughts on “Notebook of a Beginner Sewist: Wiksten FO”

  3. What a darling dress. Either way you wear it, it will be a great piece. A red belt would really make it pop or even a black shiny belt (read, patent leather). Or go all out and try a shell belt or Concho belt. So many choices.

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  4. Oh what an achievement and so satisfying. Looks fabulous. The blue belt is great, I guess you’d have to try the red to see if you liked it. Oh well, now what’s next!!

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  5. Oooh, I like Marsha’s belt ideas. Your dress is cute on your Stef. It looks really comfortable with or without the belt. You being a California girl, I imagine you can wear that in nearly every season?

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  10. You look as young as your daughters and so pretty in your new dress! I’ve loved reading about your sewing journey. I was wondering how people bought patterns online and then have them printed. You just take a file of the pieces to a copy shop and ask them to print it as one big piece? That part kind of confused me and I’d love to know.

    My only experience with sewing garments was back when I was in high school and at that time, we only had patterns picked up at the fabric store. I would love to experiment and start making my own clothes again.

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    1. Hi Paula. When you buy the PDF, you’ll get files for east-at-home printing and for the copy shop. You may have a copy shop in your area and can probably call and ask. Beforehand, open and look at the copy shop file. Look to see if it shows what size it is. The width is 30-36″. The length varies on the pattern. You can then tell your local copy shop the sizing and see what they say. I ordered online, the place was cheaper than other online options and I didn’t want to have to go into a copy shop place. There are sizing choices to order from once you know what the size of the copy shop files are.

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  11. Congrats, you look very young and sweet in your new dress! And you are so diligent and thoughtful in your sewing notes, I’m sure they will be of great help to anyone wishing to sew the dress.

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