Prison Guard

Thanks to Debbie and Teri, I will forever think of this dress as the Prison Guard Uniform. Today, I took some fullness out. Wanting to make sure it still have enough ease to clear my hips, I started 14" up from the seams and tapered down to 3/4" from each princess seam and 1" from the side seams where the seam had already been sewn. Does that make sense? That took a total of 10" of fullness out of the hem line. Because JB said he liked it and I was up in the air, I went ahead and looked for buttons. I was able to come up with 6 large 1" buttons from the stash. The are hard to see, but they are a creamy white with clear marks around the edges. They also have what appears to be handstitching between the center and outside edges with the clear bits. The green shows through and I like them. Finally, I hemmed the dress 3" shorter than yesterday's length. It's a little shorter than what I would normally wear and I don't know how comfortable I'll be wearing it. But, where the length was hitting my legs yesterday wasn't a good length. So, I hemmed it to be shorter than my chubby old lady knees (but I thank my friend VeeDogKnits for the vote of confidence that my knees can show). Carolyn, I'm sorry about the crappy mirror shots, but JB is out in the jungle planting food and being tortured by the bumble bees. I'll share their hive another day. I want to try out McCalls 4769, and Vogue 8383 before I make the final decision on which pattern to use for the Navy eyelet. Also, after prewashing the border floral - I don't think I bought enough for a dress. Must have been thinking of a full skirt.

Matronly?

So, what do you think? This is my modified version of Simplicity 2996. It's not yet finished as technically this is made from old JoAnn's fabric that I don't particularly love. But as JB and Carolyn pointed out - I'm using it as muslin rather than tossing it. Anyway - Bonnie said that to her the line drawing looked a little bit matronly. So, I'm wondering - what do you think? I went ahead and used the Simplicity pattern because it was closer to my size than the McCalls. While my shoulders are a size 14 or so, my bust is much closer to a 16 and the hips are off the chart! I always have trouble making a nice smooth transition from the pattern size to my size and usually end up with the dreaded jodpur hip. However, I think I successfully avoided that this time. I wanted a dress that buttoned down the front - all the way, not just to a waist seam. So, I simply extended the button band and the facing to the bottom. I didn't add any length and while this length is okay if I never hem it, it needs to have slightly more length to have a nice finished length. So, do I finish it and move forward with the Navy eyelet or do I test the McCalls tomorrow? Tonight I'm getting ready to make risotto and pork chops and then I'm knitting.