Lookie What I Made

This little dress was my weekend project and I'm surprised it actually turned out ok! I'm not the best at following patterns and it took waaay too much brain power to figure out how all the pieces went together.

What made it hard was this vintage pattern I found. Very cool dress (ok I admit I've been watching A LOT of Mad Men and just had to have a Betty Draper dress. Tehehe.) but the pattern was really hard to understand! Besides being in yards and inches, it also didn't explain the steps very well and the pattern pieces have no markings.

I took it to Spotlight to see if someone working there could help me because I couldn't figure out the skirt part of the dress. But they were no help either - there were 3 of us scratching our heads. I just went home and got stuck in to see how far I got.
In the end the bodice was so much harder than the skirt. The 2 darts they had in the pattern just made the fabric bunch up and bulge around my bust which looked terrible. So I improvised and made one long curved seam that ran from the waist to the armpit (like I'd seen in other dresses). Needless to say I was very impressed when it actually worked and pulled the fabric into a nice snug fit. Yay! Then after that the skirt was pretty easy. It took me 7 hours but I reckon the next time I do it it'll be a lot less. Although I have 3 other vintage patterns to try first...

:)Kim