Striped Dress Comes Together (and Doesn't)

In the three weeks since I have shown the Vogue striped dress, I have gotten a lot of knitting done. I took it along when I went to my mom's for the Easter weekend. At some point, I had the front done, and the back very close:

I can't remember if I finished it during the visit or shortly after I got back. In any case, the back is now done as well.

I pieced the front and back together along one side. I seamed it with a crochet chain for some reason instead of a needle and thread. I'm sure the idea was planted by all of the sweaters I take apart. I think I didn't want to cut lengths of yarn to seam with and have more ends to work in. (There were a lot of ends from the stripes.) Later I thought I could have used those ends to sew the seam together in short sections before working in the ends. That was a thought too late in coming.

So I sewed the seam with a continuous thread and a crochet hook. I had to redo the bottom section where I used one strand of the yarn for the turned up hem. I needed to do more careful work with a mattress stitch (and matching yarn) so that it couldn't be seen.

After one side, I moved onto the shoulder seams. After careful work and a redo to improve on the first try, I held the piece away from myself to look at it. Um, something didn't seem right...

Yeah, I managed to sew the front left shoulder to the back right shoulder! So that was not going to work.

Since then, I have done both shoulder seams (correctly) and the last side seam. Before I raced onto facings and finishing the hem, I decided I had to stop and try it on.

Sorry, I didn't take a picture (you'll have to wait) but the fit was good enough to continue. But I did notice that I didn't match up the front and back well enough. There's a green stripe right at the waist that should match up at the side seams and it doesn't. (Apparently I didn't remember that while sewing the seam.) So I'll be taking advantage of the "quick rip" qualities of the crocheted seam and redoing the side seams again. I didn't make it easy on myself when I decided not to do identical stripes on the front and back. That would have made it easy to keep them matched up.

Once that is done, I'll decide whether to tackle something straight forward like sewing up the hem or tackle something that will require more figuring--the facings around the neck and armholes. Of course it's an illusion of choice because they both have to be done eventually!