Indecent Exposure

Oh my - I guess it had to happen at some point.  Lekala disappointed me with dress pattern 4603 👎.

I was so excited when I saw this dress and was elated when I saw it only had 4 pieces.  I loved the drape of the dress and had the perfect fabric for it in my stash. I knew I could have this dress whipped up in no time.

Lekala Dress 4603

I ordered the pattern and had it in my custom size in a 5 minutes.  I cut and taped the pieces together and that is when I saw the problem.  The back looked fine but the front looked a little short.  I checked the assemble page to see if I had left something out but I didn't.

I held the back paper pattern up to my body and it looked good just like the pattern picture.  I held the front up to my body and thought surely I had done something wrong and looked at the assemble page and verified all the pieces were there.

I decided I had better do a muslin first.  I quickly cut and stitched the front and back and tried it on.  The back was fine as I expected it to be but the front of the dress fell about 1 inch below my crotch -  YES ONLY 1 INCH BELOW MY CROTCH and I was standing still.

Front of the Dress Falls 1" Below my Crotch

Back of Dress - Perfect

There were several problems with this pattern.

1. There was no way I could cut the front and back on the fold.  Even 60" (30" folded in half) wasn't wide enough.
2. They didn't adjust the front pattern for the bust darts.  They added the darts but forgot to lengthen the front for the amount the darts removed.  If you notice on the muslin there are no bust darts because after I sewed them in I removed them because I realized the front was shorter by the width of the darts.
3. If I actually wore this as a dress I would get arrested for indecent exposure.  This "dress"  barely covered my crotch area and that was only if I stood still.

Conclusion

I was so disappointed with this pattern.  It is clearly mis-labeled as a "dress".  Lekala should label this as a top because that is exactly what it is.

I did write Lekala and was equally shocked by their initial response.  I did get a credit to get a different pattern and after a couple of email exchanges I got an apology for the initial response.

They sent an updated copy of the pattern and I am guessing they fixed the dart issue that affected the length.  When I glanced at the new version of the pattern (on the screen) it did not appear that they had lengthen the dress.