The Spontaneous Black Daisy Dress

Last Friday I was struck by the urge to make myself a dress. To just pull out some fabric and a pattern and make a dress, no long planning and designing process, just sewing. I've been working on a lot of pre-planned projects lately, and I guess I just wanted a break from that, I wanted something spontaneous. I had some new patterns from a recent pattern sale, so I picked Simplicity 0169 from my new stash, just because it was different than anything else I had in my closet and that appealed to me. Last week I went thrift store shopping with a friend and picked up several different lengths of fabric. I decided this thin, drapey, black cotton with pretty white daisies on it would work great for this project.

Now the pattern envelope said that I needed 5 1/2 yards of fabric for the short version of this dress and I only had 5 yards of the daisy print fabric, but I figured it would work. And it did! I still had about 1/2 a yard of fabric left after everything was cut out (even the bodice lining, which was supposed to be cut from another fabric.)
Once the dress was cut out I hid away in my sewing room for the rest of the evening, listening to the Pride and Prejudice audio book (I recently discovered audio books are amazing to listen to while sewing!) and getting this dress sewn together. About 6 hours later (a bit longer than a modern dress typically takes me, I guess because this one was a bit different than the dresses I usually make?) I had a new dress.

I kind of love the long puffy sleeves on this dress, they are so much fun to wear! Most of my dresses don't have sleeves, those that do mostly have elbow-length sleeves. I have two with long straight sleeves, that don't get much wear. So these puffy long sleeves are very different than anything else I have, and I'm very glad I made them this way and didn't alter the sleeve shape at all!

One of my favorite features of this pattern is the cross-over bodice. Unfortunately, due to the printed fabric, that feature doesn't show up all that well, so maybe next time I make this pattern I ought to use a sold color fabric to showcase the wrap look.

The skirt feels a little long to me, so I might shorten it a couple inches to knee-length, rather than below the knee, but I haven't  decided yet. I actually kind of like how this skirt length looks with my boots, opinions?

Over all, I'm pretty darned happy with my spur of the moment dress! I absolutely love how full the skirt is and how puffy the sleeves are, it's great fun to wear and a real eye-catcher. I only wish the cross-over bodice showed up a bit better, but hey, I can't really complain. I got this dress done in one evening, didn't have to make any alterations to the pattern to make it fit me, and wound up with a dress I really like wearing!