Simple red dress: New Look 6968 yet again

So I survived my first week back at work, but boy was it hard.  Hard to stay awake and paying attention that is! Toby has developed a bit of a cough so he has been waking quite a lot during the night, which combined with his early rising means that by about 2pm or so I'm done for the day and need a nanna nap...

I did get to spend a good chunk of Easter Monday up in my sewing room spending quality time with my fabrics.  I decided to give the red shelf of my stash a clean up, because it was in a horrendously messy state:

I didn't actually ditch too much of my red pieces: red is my favourite colour even if I don't sew with  too often, but at least it's tidy now:

Two pieces went straight into the wash, one of which is this gloriously deep red ponti knit that had been basted into a shift dress that was ginormous on me:



This is a UFO from my grandma's stash (now in my stash), recognisable by her handstitching - I've unpicked enough of her garments for refashioning to know her stitching as well as her handwriting.  It actually has a matching jacket that was completed that my mum currently wears, but I guess a dress and jacket combo might have been too much for my grandma and she didn't finish this.  I was going to take in the side seams and put some darts in, but it was just way too low under the arms for a quick refashion like that.  So instead I pulled it apart completely and just treated it like two oddly shaped pieces of fabric.

I used New Look 6968 again (first, second and third time), not only because it's a great fitting dress but also because it's really economical in it's fabric use so I knew I could squeeze it out from this.  I did need to lower the neckline though because the pattern is for a high round neck but the neckline of the dress was cut too low to fit that in, but apart from that I managed to cut the rest of the pattern pieces out from the fabric:

Check out my new 'back to work' haircut - even if my heart isn't in it at the moment at least I look the part!

I fully lined this dress with some lining fabric in a deep purple colour bought by the roll from the Remnant Warehouse last year sometime, so I didn't have to use any facings luckily since there wasn't any fabric left over for those.  I attached the dress to the lining at the vent at the centre back, but thanks to this photo I can see that I didn't do it properly because there is a slight bulge above the vent.  There is value in taking photos of these unflattering angles after all

I can also see how bad my posture is too from this photo - I always knew that my right shoulder was lower than my left, but the wrinkles above the waistline on my right side seem to indicate that I am slumping quite a bit.  Hmmm, perhaps I need to see a chiropractor or physio before it gets any worse.

I don't about you, but when I think of a red dress I think of either an overly sexy, va va voom style dress or a tacky dress best worn with stripper heels! But it turns out a red dress, at least a dress in a darker, deeper red like this one, is quite versatile.  I can tone it down a bit with a beige jacket (RTW from Jacquie E) to wear to work:

or make it really casual with a denim jacket (made by me) and some flats:

And I've even cut out and started sewing a second piece in red - I'm so happy to be using my red fabrics finally.