Vertical stripes > horizontal stripes

After I made the catsuit in my last post, I had a bunch of leftover striped fabric. I combined that with some leftover black spandex from this project to make a quick color-blocked dress. The whole thing is serged together, and I used my standard fitted knit dress pattern. (You can find the tutorial for it here).

You'll notice a strange collar in the photos as well. I saw some cool collars and other accessories made out of boning a couple weeks ago and wanted to give it a shot. More on that later.

Back to the dress: To figure out the color-blocking, I traced my plain dress pattern and eyeballed a line where I wanted the center panel to be. It follows the curves of the side seams on the dress, but slightly exaggerated. I cut on the line and made a note to add seam allowance on the new edges.

I used the black as binding on all the edges. It's not cut on the bias because the fabric is stretchy as it is.

Here's a closer look at the collar:

The neckband is made of a wide knit elastic, and the rest is rigilene boning. I didn't originally plan on this being so loopy but the boning is stiffer than I expected. I sewed the boning pieces to the neckband, then played around with sewing them to each other until the collar was comfortable. It closes with the kind of hook and bar that is usually used on waistbands.

 I added the bow on the front because the point was too sharp. It hides some binding that covers the edges there.

I like these kinds of skeletal looking accessories, and want to make some more, though the stiffness of the boning makes it a bit hard to work with. Covered boning would probably be easier to sew.