Frankensale dress!

So. As most of you know, local fabric store Potter Textiles recently had a big (50% off) sale. As many of you also know, my office is 138 steps from Potters. So, yeah. No “I will only sew from my stash” new year resolutions for me… the fabric was on sale! 😀

In the sale, I impulse purchased a patterned viscose. I *must* have seen this fabric on the racks many times before… but it had clearly never grabbed my attention. But this time – I could picture exactly the dress I was going to make!

The dress is based on the Sewaholic Cambie pattern which I had made once before… which, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about! Whoops. Here’s what I ended up with ::

I opted to make the sweetheart neckline less pronounced  (though in hindsight I wish I’d straightened it). But otherwise, I made the bodice pretty much to the pattern (with a few small fitting adjustments).

Here’s the dress from the back (I also wish I’d lifted the back neckline – next time, Gadget! ::When I made the pattern the first time, I made it with a full skirt. This time, I was making a work dress, so wanted a  a narrower skirt. Having borrowed the pattern from a friend, I didn’t have the pattern pieces for the a-line skirt option which came with the pattern. So I franken-pieced the skirt together using a pattern piece I’d made for an earlier skirt, and then used the pocket pieces/yoke etc from a pair of shorts I’d made! 😛

Here’s how the pockets ended up looking ::

Dresses with pockets are the bestest! I also added belt loops to a dress for the first time. Ace! Also – did you notice my pattern matching on the side seam there? (Sure it’s not like matching stripes or anything… but I made an effort! It counts!)

Want to know the other secret of the dress? Well, I might have had trouble distinguishing the right side of the fabric from the wrong side when I first started sewing. So I might have sewn the darts in backwards. Unfortunately the needle marked the fabric quite badly, sew I decided against unpicking the darts, and instead decided to justify them as a “feature”! 😉 Sneaky, eh? Turns out the busy-ness of the fabric means the outward facing darts aren’t all that obvious anyway!

Final thing to say? The dress is fully lined using the lovely black silk-cotton (also purchased on sale from Potters). Lovely, lovely. 🙂

Btw – are you friends with Potter Textiles on Facebook? If not, send them a friend request here:: http://www.facebook.com/fabricoutletshop