I ended up making a few different changes to the pattern. For one, you can see that I took off the sleeves. I had made the dress with the short gathered sleeves in the pattern photo and even spent some time adjusting them to fit, but once I had the dress together I felt like the sleeves kind of detracted from the scallop neckline detail and vice-versa. I think it would be cute to have either one of those design details but both on the same dress ended up being too much, so I opted to have a sleeveless dress and finished the armholes with some bias binding. I also changed the skirt. The one in the pattern was cute, but it consisted of eight separate gored pieces and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have enough fabric if I did it that way. So I drafted my own simple flared skirt to go with the bodice using this simple method. I like how it turned out and the fact that, once again, the simplicity wouldn’t detract from the scalloped neckline.
I ended up having to move the darts down on this pattern to fit properly (thanks to my sewing teacher for pointing that out!). That was the first time I had done this particular alteration and it really helped the fit on this dress. I used the method shown here and it was surprisingly simple. I was debating if I should have tried a full bust adjustment as well. I’ve never done one so I wasn’t so sure. The dress fits my bustline but there is a teensy bit of extra room in the armholes. What do you more experienced sewists think? Should I try that next time?
Fabric: main: Stampede Lawn in Mint by Sarah Watts for Cotton and Steel
lining: lightweight white muslin
