oops, (nearly) did it again

Thank you all for your feedback on the grey dress - so many great ideas as well as much encouragement for how it looks as is. This is what I just love about blogging, it's like having a friendly but helpful critical sewing friend in your life when you may not have one of those in real life. I've decided I will wear the dress a few times to see if I can live with it as it is (and I suspect I will probably forget all about the side and back views when I'm wearing it) and if not I will reluctantly get out the seam ripper and think about an alteration. But I will try to accessorise it better - I have plenty of fab brooches and necklaces but just never think about putting them on. I need to do the opposite of Coco Chanel's advice and put one thing more on before leaving the house!

Anyway I think my brain is still on holidays because not only has my sewing output remained low so far this year, I almost very nearly made another shapeless dress. Except I turned it into a skirt and all was saved.

Back in 2008 this fabric and pattern appeared in my SWAP list:

I did in fact sew this dress in 2008, albeit in a different fabric and when I was heavily pregnant with Anna so I made a slight modification to the pattern to add extra width across the front and turned it into maternity wear:

And it is great for a maternity dress! For a non-maternity dress, not so much. I should've figured that out given the magazine model looks to be in the family way, and only review of this pattern on pattern review was for a maternity version as well! I however, thought that if I sewed this in a soft drapey fabric that those folds on the front would just hang down nicely and the darts in the back would cinch it in just so.

Well not only was this dress verrry roomy all around, it's also very low cut in typical Burda style. Last time around I had a more impressive bust line to work with, but now that I've gone back to my less than well endowed chestal region, I had to hoick this dress up so much just to cover my bra straps let alone for decency that the end result was that the shoulder straps would have been 3cm long at most, not the 8.5cm the pattern calls for. All in all the dress looked a bit silly and not a flowy summery dress like I imagined.

So I cut it in half, sewed on a wide waistband and made this a-line skirt instead:

Much better! I really like this, and it's not even grey! The fabric is a soft poly-cotton that I bought a few years ago, and I've made a lining from some black cotton poplin because the outer fabric is rather thin. I also used a longer invisible zip than is usual for a skirt: 35cm as opposed to 20-22cm long because I find with higher, snug fitting waistbands it's harder to slide over my hips if the zipper isn't that little bit longer.

All my stripe matching practice lately is clearly paying off, because the black and white band around the bottom of the skirt matches perfectly at not only the side:

but also the back:

I wore this skirt all day today and not only was it comfortable it barely wrinkled as well so I can say unconditionally that I'm delighted with how this turned out. So hopefully this will re-energise my sewing mojo so that I can get on with all the projects that are in my head!