I made ANOTHER knit dress.

It was inevitable after such hard won success with my first one.

Many other sewists have made the Moneta dress and repeated the experience. Well, give me a baton. I’m joining the parade.

This version of Moneta is in a teal stretch jersey that was too lightweight on its own for winter, so I underlined it with self-fabric. A fancy way of saying I doubled the fabric to make it heavier weight.

But that shit was no fun. It took way too much time to double cut, match and pin all of the pattern pieces. My convertible overlocker was a beast about serging all of those layers, but when it came time to coverstitch the hem…we had us some struggles.

If I had to do it again, I’d baste the hem before coverstitching to stabilize it. Fusible hem tape wouldn’t work so well with all of the stretch and double layers of fabric, so the added steps of hand or machine basting and later removing it are worth the spared heartache of a wavy hem.

A situation I have chosen to live with on this dress. Because after number two, there’s always number three.

The original instructions have you clumsily sewing in clear elastic to give the waistline enough stretch to pull over your shoulders. Since my local Joann’s has been out of clear elastic for months, I used the regular stuff on this Moneta and its predecessor.

Basting the elastic to the waistline was madness the first time, so for this second dress, I gathered the waist manually, sewed a wider seam allowance and used it as a casing to insert the 1/4″ elastic.

A much better sewing experience.

I understand the knit dressmaking addiction I’ve been reading about on other blogs. The jones I have for the next fix (perhaps a collar or some color blocking for round three) is strong.

In the meantime, this DIY double knit teal Moneta will entertain me with its bright and cozy ways.