Two designs in one

All work and no play makes me extra fidgety. So, I took a break from studying, browsed some fashion mags, and saw this Rachel Roy dress worn by Lucy Liu:

Gorgeous! I've been wanting to make a color-block dress and this one just knocked my socks off. The colors are nice fabulous, and obviously the fabric some kind of fancy expensive designer silk. On Lucy Liu it looks elegant, on me unfortunately it would look matronly. I thought changing the skirt to bias a-line would make it less "proper".

So, that's the first design that inspires my next project.

The second one is AnaJan's Bordeaux dress that is also on my long to-do list:

Just the neckline, really, is what I like. So I'm adapting that neckline into my dress:

I choose red for the bodice, because orange is too "spring" and I want to be able to wear it in colder weather.

These are some neckline and color variations:

Next post will be about drafting the pattern for this dress from the sloper.

The Burda-inspired dress is done...

... and it looks like a sofa:

With me wearing it, it IS a sofa.

Hee... hee... Just kidding, I don't have body-image issues. I like the dress. I've worn worse things.

Anyway, a couple of technical highlights following.

Instead of sewing the v-neck in one continuous stitch, I did it shoulder-to-front on one side, then repeat on the other. No puckers or bunches like I used to get! Although, still have that pointy dart issue.

The fabric probably wasn't the best choice. It leaves needle holes, as you can see here (the white dots are the holes from the stitches):

I hemmed it with straight stitch because the fabric is not blind-stitch friendly. (Well, okay, fine... I didn't feel like blind stitching by hand and haven't figured out how to use the machine's blind stitch correctly.)

Okay... probably need to study now.