When we get folks who want to start off with a knit, it is always good if they keep it simple. Vogue #8919 is a great example of a simple knit dress that fits the bill:
We settled on view A and the results were great. She is just a little bustier than the pattern allowed and has a smaller waist, so she had to modify the side panel insets slightly in both areas. It turned out great!
She worked this up in an athletic knit and a textured leatherette knit from Vogue fabrics. She sewed the main seams with a serger and then topstitched the seams toward the respective centers with a regular machine stitch set at 2.5mm. You have to be careful when you are pressing these types of knits or you will flatten or obscure the texture. We forwent the overstitch machine for the topstitching, as two rows of stitching would be a little distracting in the ground of the textured leatherette. With the serving inside, it was fine.
General Fitting notes: Overall, this patten has a great shape. If you need to make adjustments, we’d recommend doing them where the side front or side back joins the front or back, if not at the side seam itself. For this, we added about 1/8″ at the fullest part of the bust and removed 1/2″ at the narrowest part of the waist, grading it in to match, then removed 1/4″ on both the front and back at the side seam at the narrowest part of the waist.
We’d recommend against altering the center front or back body sections for width or circumference if this is your first time altering or you will tend to throw off the proportion.
General shape notes: The sleeves are two pieces – front and back dolman sleeves with a shoulder seam but no set in sleeves. This is a shape that is going to be inherently generous with the amount of fabric under the arms and around the side of the bustline. It is hard to fit this shape out generally if you want something fitted, and if you overfit it you will lose mobility. Still a great shape, though.
You can read about Vogue #8919 on Pattern Review here.
You can see it on the Vogue site here, though it wasn’t in the catalogs as long as others, it is still available as an out-of-print pattern.