Old habits die hard

Thank you all for the suggestions on what to wear with the blue dress - I think I need to set aside a day for some dress up time to see what I have in the wardrobe that could work, but I realise now that I do have many options.  There is no formal dress code at my work, only the one I set for myself because I find it easier and quicker each day just to put on a matching suit each morning, but perhaps I should be more creative in what I wear.  Either way I don't think that the orphan dress will be without a partner(s) for long.

I don't want to harp on about my new overlocker too much because I'm sure you'll all got the message of how much I love it so I'll try to make this my very last reference to it.  Because it was such a pain to change threads in my old overlocker I used to decide on my sewing projects based on what colour thread was in the machine, and as a result used to do many projects in a row in the same colour.  Well I guess old habits are slow to die because after making my blue dress I decided to knock out one more quick project in blue before changing threads for another project.  Totally unnecessary now of course since it takes mere minutes to change threads, but it's a cute dress so I'm glad I did.

This project started life as a dress given to me by a friend who has a naughty habit of buying things without trying them on and not always bothering to return them either (yes Catherine, I'm talking about you!).  Anyway she gave me a bag of clothes that she thought I could wear or make something out of since the fabrics were quite nice, including this stretch denim dress:

When I tried this dress on the short length, the pleated empire line and the sheer shoulders reminded me of this:

source

Not a very good look at all! At first I was just going to take off the bodice and make it a pleated high waisted skirt but I already have two denim skirts so instead I took it completely apart and made this dress for Anna:

It's Simplicity 2320, the cap sleeved version of the grey corduroy dress with the red flowers I posted here.  The orange fabric is some cotton paisley print from the stash, and I reused the zipper from the original dress so overall this dress cost me nothing at all except for an hour and a half of my time. 

I'm really impressed with this pattern - it's quite simple to make, isn't an overly fussy nor too simplistic style and it's possible to achieve a very different look depending on choice of fabrics.  I can see a few more versions of this dress in Anna's wardrobe before she grows out of the size.

This dress was perfect for the sunny winter Saturday we just had to chase some bubbles:

For having a cup of tea:

And for munching on a matching orange lollipop: