Oliver + S Ice Cream Dress

I was listening to CBC Radio 2 this morning and the host was talking about four stages of learning.  As summarised by Wikipedia, they are:

1. Unconscious Incompetence

   The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.

2. Conscious Incompetence

   Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

3. Conscious Competence

   The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

4. Unconscious Competence

   The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

I think with my sewing right now, I am somewhere between two and three.  I have enough knowledge to plow (plough?) ahead, but I often make mistakes.  Still, I learn from these mistakes, which is great!

This week I decided to make a dress for M from an Oliver + S pattern I bought a few months ago. I’m quite pleased at how it turned out. It was definitely not perfect, mostly because of the fabric I chose, a light knit. Working with stretchy fabric definitely takes practice, but given that it’s January (or was when I made this), I wanted something warmer than a simple cotton. If I did it again, I might make the yoke and hem from a cotton and the rest of the dress from jersey, although I’d definitely have to prewash in that case.

The hem and notched pockets are a bit wonky. But I really liked the curve of the pockets. I used this method for achieving smooth corners from April 1930s and it was so much easier than trying to iron them under “freehand.”

I’m sure I’ll make this dress again and I suspect it will go a lot faster the second time.