Melbourne Cup Dress : A Change of Direction

So I had to throw all my dressmaking plans out for this dress and go back to the drawing board.  Sigh!  This is due to the fact that I've put on around 5kg (10 pounds) since I've been unwell - too much comfort food!  I no longer have enough of the horsey fabric to get around my now curvier curves...  Thankfully I hadn't started cutting ANYTHING out, so I was able to rethink from scratch.

 

Its going to be a bit more of a challenge now...

So I started thinking about my options, and realised I could make a skirt with panels... and I remembered this skirt:

 

The wiggliest wiggle skirt! 

Right!  So the skirt bit was sorted - but what about the top?  I made the pattern for the skirt from my Marilyn dress but I didn't want the top like that - cause this is for the day time, not the night time...

I had recently done a Full Bust Adjustment on this pattern to give me a bit more room, and I thought that this, with a V neck instead of a scooped neck, would give me the look I was after:

 

Gee I wish I was still this size.... 

So - the dress will have an empire line, with the blouse ending under the bust, and the skirt with the shaped seam lines will continue from there to just under my knees.  I'm pretty happy with this design, and I'll have enough fabric to make it happen!  Hooray!!

Also, my shoes arrived - and they are a FABULOUS match!

 

I also got a beige/sand coloured clutch bag

And Bobbie, from Madly Hatted Millinery, who I commissioned to make my fascinator, has made a start, collecting these bits:

 

See the little scrap of fence I sent her to get colour matches from

Now that I'm feeling much better I'm pretty sure I'll have the dress all but done this weekend, so you can all excitedly look forward to next weeks post where I will show you the Melbourne Cup Horsey Dress!!!

Thanks for your patience over the past few weeks.

Beccie
xxx