Dress Two: Drop Waist, Short Sleeves Rose Pattern

So I have had this skirt idea floating around in my head for a few weeks.  It is what inspired me to get my butt to the fabric store in the first place.  While I don't typically make patterns I had to do a proof of concept for this dress to make sure it would actually work.

So each of the skirt pieces is shaped like an elongated pentagon, point facing down.   The short sides were attached six total creating a skirt.  So I sized and cut these out on paper first and taped them together to make sure that six would be large enough to fit as a skirt.  Then I used the six paper items to place on the cloth to make sure that if I cut them all out I had enough fabric left to complete the top.  I did.

Not liking collars I simply cut a neck hole and hemmed it, then did a slope stitch to face the sleeves down on the shoulder and hemmed up the sides.  I hemmed and closed out the sleeves.  But it was simply too much rose pattern and I decided I needed to add another color before attaching the bottom.  This also added length as the skirt itself was rather short since it had a jagged bottom.

While adding this red velvet fabric, something I found in my sewing basket that I must have had for ten years it visually did wonders and created a pretty drop waist.  But I don't like what it has done to the top portion of the dress.

I think I've decided this dress isn't quite finished yet as it doesn't drape just like I want it too and the skirt doesn't have quite enough spin.  Plus I think it needs an additional collar.  So I think I will hem some of the red velvet around the collar to add a bit more contrast and I may take in the sides of the dress to slim it down a little so the red belt is slightly wider versus slightly slimmed.

See that's the other thing, I can't find my pins either so I have been folding my hems on the fly but if I want to take in the dress I need to pin it first, though I suppose I can use safety pins for the tie being.  I want to make sure holly can still take the dress on and off and get into the sleeves.

I suspect as I move forward to future projects I will need to think about Velcro, zippers, and perhaps buttons to make some more fitted designs.  I think I need to also get some black or at least solid color fabric to use as accents on future designs.

So this dress I "finished" on a Saturday afternoon.  I spent maybe1.5-2 hours at the sewing machine in the evening while Joel and Holly played and while he gave her a bath (Downstairs) and prior to that I spent maybe an hour upstairs cutting the paper and the fabric and working on the pixie skirt as Joel like to refer to it.

I think I need to get a TV for downstairs so I can watch while I sew.  So far I have only worked while Holly was awake and playing.  Once she is in bed and it's dark I don;t feel like being downstairs by myself and I want to watch all my shows and blog.  But so far sewing while she plays has worked very well.