March’s Me-Made Dress

Happy March!!! and St Patrick’s day, which this green dress is a happy coincidence. Three months into this challenge and I’m starting to feel a bit more confident with my self-drafting skills… namely sleeves (still very much avoiding having to add zips or stitch any complex designs). I just finished binging season 2 of Bridgerton so I was inspired by the look of those square recency necklines with a slightly puffed sleeve but resemblance ended there. 

The main issue I had with this dress was having to be aware of the dress pattern, which I hadn’t had to worry about much before. It might not look like it, but this fabric does have a slight checked rectangle texture to it so I had to try and position my pattern pieces to get the most of my fabric. I wanted to have a very full skirt and a gathered tier at the bottom, so I actually ran out of fabric for a traditional style bodice even though i had about 5metres of fabric. So I kinda drafted some slightly unorthodox straps for the sleeves and off I went. In the end I was super happy with how the sleeves turned out as I had seen some other dress designs with some shirring to gather in the bottom of the sleeves. This worked perfectly for a cute little feature, but also meant I didn’t have to try and measure my biceps for the elastic.