Hacking a New (to me) Pattern

...into my usual dress shape.

So, this time I started with New Look 6080 from 2011

Technically I used View C, because I included those ridiculously tiny sleeves (which I like very much), but I cut the whole thing off at waist level, then added the normal slightly A-line skirt + "oops, not quite enough cloth" shaped contrast band

 The floral prints were both from thrift store fabric grab bags, and I originally had about 5½ yards of the black field floral.  But!  A friend wanted to make a floral bomber jacket and asked people to keep an eye out for affordable florals, and I dug into my stash and pulled this out and asked if it would do.  It did!  I offered all of it, but they are not as greedy as I am so asked only for 3½ yards.  Since that meant what I kept was now near the top of the stash pile, I decided to use the rest for this project.  Which wasn't quite enough to get the skirt length I wanted, so the half yard of "I'm pretending it's ivory, not yellow" floral came into play. 

I am...ambivalent about yellow, and the amount of yellow in this may have been why it took me days and days to make...especially after I realized the golden yellow flowers were morning glory and wisteria, both of which are properly purple.  Oooh, if they were purple instead, I would adore this print...and might not have been so generous with it...  So!  It's for the better, because it's all cleared out of my stash now, which is always good.

The feature that sets this bodice most obviously apart from my usual dresses like this is, of course, the section of pin tucks

I marked their positions with a snip in the seam allowance and a straight pin in the end, then folded and pinned between.  To stitch, I aligned the folded edge with the inside of my straight stitch presser foot

 The ridiculous tiny sleeves are also a notable feature.  I pressed the folded hem before attaching the sleeves,which I prefer because then I don't have to wrestle the entire bodice around when pressing sleeves that are already attached. (Which I guess I could also avoid if I set the sleeves in the round...but...uh...no.)

 The sleeves were cut on the cross grain, in the spirit of "oops, not quite enough cloth."

Something else that this bodice has going, that isn't in the dresses like this I've made over the last year, are french darts--although...are they still french darts if they don't make it all the way back to the side seams?  Because these end in the waist seam, just...diagonal from where they started.  And I forgot to photograph them.

I also forgot to photograph the faded areas near the printed selvedge that turned out to be unavoidable with the yardage I was working with.  I did send a message to the friend who got the rest of this fabric--since the pattern they want to use calls for 3 yards, the extra half yard should provide plenty of room to avoid the faded spots.  I now suspect whoever bought this cloth originally got it at a discount due to the fading, which was why there was so much yardage.  (I mean, I still paid less, heh.)

 Nothing new at the contrast--used the curve of the lower edge of the A-line skirt to cut the corresponding curve and hem of the contrast, sewed all side seams, aligned things, stitched, serged, pressed, edge stitched.  I did switch from the black thread, used for construction of the rest of the dress, to ivory for the hem, which I once again sewed with the edge roller attachment.

(Someday, I might just gather a big rectangle to the waist and or as the contrast, but, so far, that just hasn't felt right, so I do the slightly fussier gathered A-line.)

Of course there are pockets, and of course I didn't have enough of either of the other prints.  I used a sushi print that was part of the friends' relatives' destash.  It's coordinating enough.

And the back!   Which has a center back seam, something else that isn't in my usual patterns.

Not sure if his counts as variety, since, at a glance, it looks so much like the other dresses I've been making over the last year, but, y'know, it's finished.