plaid dress

I've been messing around for a few months, trying to make a good pattern from an old thrift store dress. I bought the original dress something like 6 years ago. It was a maternity dress, and I took in the side seams so that it was fitted. Then, since it was a hideous tan/mauve plaid, I dyed it black. It turned out to be more like a dark mauve plaid, but not as bad as before.


Did I mention this was really itchy wool? And sleeveless? So, why did I love wearing this dress? It's been one of my favorites. So I finally got up the nerve to take it apart and make a pattern from it. Sounded easy, but alas, two months and 4 attempts later, I finally have sort of a good pattern.

It's cold out, so I decided to add sleeves. And I found this cozy flannel plaid and thought it looked like a good holiday fabric (that could easily be "not holiday" as well). It came out better than I expected with the sleeves. I didn't even do a test run of the sleeves, just kind of made it up--that usually means disaster! I got lucky this time. Anyway, I'll be making 57 more versions of this dress since I love the pattern so much. It's just the perfect shift dress for doing anything and it has a lot of possibilities for embellishments, details, and using different fabrics. I even used scrap material I had for the hem and sleeve bands on this one.

Oh, by the way, after I finished the dress and was really proud of myself, I found a Simplicity pattern in my stash that was pretty much the exact same thing. Argh. But I made this one!