Button Button

I was skipping through Shabby Apple's dresses one day, and decided I wanted the "Lois Lane" dress!  Obviously, I made my own variations, so its not exactly the same dress, but mine cost me $6 vs. $79.  I love how its a little nautical, completely modest, and now I finally have a dress that works with breastfeeding.

 

 Cheers to weighing in at 2 lbs. under my pre-baby weight!  No, Doctor, I have not been exercising.  Just pushing 80 lbs. of boy + massive double stroller around town.

Here's a behind-the-scenes demo :).  I always start with a picture.  I don't often work with patterns, but for detailed garments, I'll find a similar pattern, then alter it how I want.  With this dress, I pulled out my generic slopers from patternmaking class in college.  The general concept is to take a sloper and manipulate the darts in order to make or remove seams in different places.  In the first picture, I didn't want a bust seam, only seams in the front so I could put buttons down one side.  I copied this sloper in newspaper, then sliced and taped to make my new pattern piece.


I made the petal sleeves by making two sleeve caps and joined them at the underarm seam.





For the collar, I joined the front and back slopers at the shoulder seam (overlap them a little to make the collar stand up a little) and traced the neckline.

 Ta-da!