Sew For Victory! The design and pattern

Its time for an update on my Sew For Victory! project(s).

I have decided to make two dresses because I was so exited and I couldn't decide which one to go for and also I wanted to make (and then have) patterns for both styles.

Number one is a cotton shirt dress. Yes, a shirt dress, because I can not have too many and I just love that kind of dress.

I didn't have a pattern to make the dress so I had to come up with my own.

My design was inspired by elements from my inspiration dresses in this post here.

Ignore the dress on the left, that was just another idea I wont be working on for now.

I used an existing pattern I have and moved the darts to where I wanted them to be in the pattern. The original pattern has a bust dart and a waist dart so I eliminated the bust dart added darts to the shoulder and one more dart to the waist to keep the fit of the original pattern and create the new look that I was after.

So sorry about the blurry picture (original pattern above, traced and manipulated on the right and new pattern piece on the left)

I used a turquoise cotton for this first dress. I don't own a lot of dresses in solid colours so I thought it was about time to make a few.

The collar in the drawing is white but none of my scraps were the right shape and size to squeeze one out. Trying the whole nifty thrifty make do and mend-thing of the war time era, I decided to just make it in the same colour.

And then I had another major fail due to my pattern butchering and over excitement. I cut the front piece of the skirt to small. It wasn't wide enough to match up with the waistline of the bodice. Panic!!!!!!!

And then I thought, before I go and buy more fabric I get that make do and mend - mentality working again and find a solution. The solution was a quick and quite easy one and resulted in another design change from my drawing.

 Pockets!!!!

The day was saved, the dress and my wallet, too.

Sorry about the blurry pictures. They were all taken at night while I was working on the dress. I didn't check them on a bigger screen until today. Lesson learnt!

Oh and I'm sure someone will ask about this, the shirt bodice front I used to manipulate is Simplicity 5022, a (I am guessing) 1960s pattern.

How is everyone getting on with their projects?