When the Greenstyle Corset Dress pattern was released a few months ago I knew I wanted to make it but it took me a while to decide what fabric to use. It is designed for scuba knit, but people seemed to have success sewing it out of ponte, swim, and other athletic knits. I didn’t have any suitable scuba, although I considered trying butter scuba from my stash or one of the several colors of ponte in my stash. I also considered a print athletic knit I bought a while ago and found it didn’t look in person quite like I was expecting. I decided it still wasn’t what I was looking for. I especially liked some of the print versions of the Corset dress that other people made, and also some of the versions with alternate color vertical panels. I didn’t have suitable print fabric, but I found some large scraps leftover from my daughter’s sage green prom dress and a light blue dress, both made from shiny mid-weight nylon spandex. I wasn’t sure at first whether the sage and light blue really went together, but after staring at them in my sewing room for a couple of weeks I decided they would work. And since I didn’t have enough of either of these fabrics for a whole dress, combining them into one dress seemed like a good thing to do.

The Greenstyle patterns have a weird sizing system that always puzzles me. I measured myself, and found I was size B2 at the high bust, B1 at the full bust, and C2 at the waist and hip. I selected B2 and hoped for the best.

The dress bodice has 12 pattern pieces. I cut them all out and labelled them with a description written onto a piece of scotch tape. I laid them out on my floor as I cut them so I could keep track of them all and then I machine basted them together to check whether the size was terribly off.

I then removed the basting from the size seams and serged all the other seams. I didn’t have to pin them since they were already basted together. This dress has a 3/8-inch seam allowance so all the seams got trimmed as I serged. Up to this point, the pattern was a pretty fast and easy sew.

I won’t wear a dress without pockets so I copied some pockets I had used on another dress and sewed them on. I made one pocket blue and the other sage, matching them with the color on the front of the dress where they attached. As usual, attaching the pockets took some time.

The pattern calls for a shelf bra, which also serves as a facing for the neckline and straps. I used khaki-colored poly/spandex 250 gsm yoga knit jersey that I had gotten on sale for $3/yard for the shelf bra. I sewed the bra on and understitched it, although I did not add the optional elastic around the neckline. I did the burrito and added the elastic to the bottom of the bra. Then I tried it on. The shelf bra didn’t do much for me — this is usually my experience with shelf bras. I tried it on with a regular bra and it looked a lot better, but the bra was somewhat visible. I switch to a low-cut push-up bra and that problem was solved. However, the shelf bra fabric would not stay put and was peaking out along the neckline. I looked at photos from other sewists and saw this appears to be a common problem with this pattern. I also noticed that the elastic from the bottom of the shelf bra created a horizontal line a couple of inches under my bust. So I decided to cut off the elastic and leave the ends of the shelf bra open so it would just serve as a facing. I also topstitched around the neckline and armscye with a shallow zigzag stitch. This was an improvement, but the bra facing was still creeping up so I hand stitched a bit of it to the center seam allowance to hold it down. Finally, I fused 5/8-inch knit hem tape to the hem, and then topstitched with a shallow zigzag stitch.

In the end, I think the dress came out pretty well and it was fun to make it out of scraps. I really like how the color blocking worked out with the straps being opposite colors. I think the light blue and sage ended up working well together as they are both about the same intensity and sheen. Thus, the color blocking is subtle and the dress doesn’t end up looking like a circus tent. The shiny athletic fabric has enough structure for the skirt to flare out a bit, but also results in princess seams that don’t need to be topstitched down. I’m glad I went with the long length, which on me is just-above-knee length. The medium length is about 3 inches shorter and might also be ok, but I don’t think I would enjoy wearing the short length, even though it does dip a little lower in back. This will be a good dress for going out — probably not a dress I would wear to work.

All that said, I do have several complaints, and the shiny, stretchy fabric hides no flaws. The pockets don’t hang as well as I would like, and they might be slightly too small, but I can fit my phone and my wallet and they don’t look terrible so I guess its mostly a win. I really don’t like the shelf bra on me so next time I would leave it out and bind the neckline and armscye instead. I also have some drag lines around the side bust and I feel like the waist should be about an inch higher on me so that it doesn’t cling to my tummy as much. I think the straps are slightly too long for me; they sometimes slip off my shoulders when I am sitting down. If I make this dress again I would shorten them about half an inch on each side and might grade out the waist slightly. Or maybe I should make the whole thing one size bigger (C1) but shorten the straps and the waist. More pondering needed.