Billow dress

In my last post I talked about a dress I had been wanting to make based on a few cute dresses I had seen online. I finished shortly after that post, but needed to get FO photos to share. Here they are:

It's not easy getting photos, in daylight without a four year-old photo-bomber in the shot. As you can see I only succeeded at the daylight part. With this dress I had hoped to achieve two dresses in one. One dress would be a casual loose-fitting pullover and the other would be able to be gathered at the waist for a more fitted silhouette. Oh! And both would have pockets. :)

I had been thinking about this dress for some time, but couldn't find the right starting place. While looking at Simple Modern Sewing for a base for my Vacation Pants, I came across the pattern for the Boatneck Jumper/Dress:

I liked the cross over straps both for their appearance and how easy it would make it to fully line the dress. Since I was tracing patterns already, I traced the top 12 inches (13.5 inches of the front to make up for the dart) of the jumper version. The pattern sat for a spell until an unexpected sewing day popped into my schedule. I cut the top pieces as I had cut the pattern, for the skirt I was limited by the amount of fabric I had. I decided the best bet to get the length I wanted was a dirndl skirt. I needed two pieces that were at least 20 inches long (my preferred skirt length) and as wide as possible. I ended up with one piece 30" wide and the other 33" wide. I used the wider piece for the back.

The first fitting looked OK, but was very billow-y and the gathers at the waist didn't provide the illusion that I wanted. Also, the waist was way to low. To fix this I took off the skirt, and redrew the top of the dress from an A-line to a . . . V-line? I kept the armscye where it was, but brought in the waist an inch (four inches total). I also raised the waist by about three inches. I love it, though to get the second shape I need to draw it in with a belt so I made one!

I have adjusted the original pattern and plan on making a second version out of some Nani Iro double gauze. In addition to the changes I made as I went along I am thinking I will add a little elastic at the waist, at least in the back, to get the waist to come in a little more while still being able to pull it on. In the meantime I will enjoy this summer in my new dress.