Dress- DONE!

March already? What happened? I finished my muslin for this dress about a week and a half ago. Good thing on that muslin too, as Hubby pointed out it "showed my religion" so I added a bit of ease in the hips. The top fit beautifully, so that's good to note. I wound up making a size 12 and adding almost 4" of ease in the hips. It's probably a little too much at this point, but there's nothing worse than a tight dress to make you feel chunkier than you are, so for now it will stay as is.

This is the back view- no, the bow is not crooked. It wasn't fastened in the first photo, but this dress looks so blah without a body in it that I decided no to mess around with the photos that much. You'll have to wait 'till I wear it to work Monday and force Hubby to take better photos (with a body in it) to see how FABULOUS this dress is. I'm completely smitten with it. There will be many more where this came from.

And here's the front. Again, "meh" on the hanger- yowza on the body.

This is actually the first dress I've ever made. I've made lots of pants, some skirts, lots and lots of tops... never a dress. I bought this pattern when I first discovered A Dress A Day and wanted to sew it as a Christmas dress in red with a black lace overlay over the top but never got around to it. I'm glad now that I didn't get around to it then. Over the last two years I have discovered the value of tracing patterns rather than cutting them out and I've really cemented the value of muslins in my stubborn little head. So it turned out a million times better than it would've.

I did line/underline the top part, but not the bottom. The whole thing is basically cheap poly fabric, but I think it looks and feels nice anyway. It should be a sturdy go-to dress. I had to line the top because I was afraid it would be see-through but when I thought more about it I realized that I didn't want the pink to show on the neckline so I put the facings in over the lining, serged their edges and sewed them down where they belong. It worked out to make an interesting inside anyway. I would say the inside looks like a basic cheapy kind of dress really, but as I said, it should stand up to a lot of abuse and it looks rockin' so I'm happy with it.

Now I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to make BWOF 09-2008-114 in a blue cotton but with a v-neckline or 09-2008-124 which I bought some fake suede leopard print stuff for. Fun times! We'll see what happens next.