This may be the most flattering dress I’ve worn in a long time. It’s from the downloadable Burda pattern #122A  and, as Clio on her Clio & Phineas blog put it, has “mystical bum enhancing properties”. Definite agree on that one! I wore it last week to my students’ convocation ceremony and got a ton of compliments on it. Don’t you love being able to tell people that you made it when they tell you how nice something you’re wearing is?

I sewed it with coral Ponte de Roma fabric (which looks much pinker in these photos; really it’s closer to orange*). It’s the first time I’ve sewn with Ponte de Roma, and I really love it! For a stretchy fabric it has really good ‘body’ and ‘weight’ (if I’m even using those terms right…I’m sure they mean something more specific to real sewists) and was really easy to sew.

Bonus for me: the pattern is sized for petite, so it came out well on my 5’4″ frame. Normally I’m not a big fan of skirt hems that fall below the knee, and I figured I would shorten it, but I went with the pattern length and I’m glad I did.

The neckline has a little wonk in it…the fabric pooches out a bit to the left, and I think that’s probably because I let one piece of fabric stretch more than the other as it went through the sewing machine, making the seam a bit off. But I’m rollin’ with it! I don’t like to mess with a good thing…better is the enemy of good, and all that. 🙂

I also found that the back neckline really pooched out a lot when I first sewed it. I ended up having to put two vertical darts in the upper back piece to correct this. Turned out just fine, and even goes well with all the other seams on the garment. Another modification I made was to leave off the bias tape at the armpits. I had trouble with the instructions for the armscythes and sleeve caps (as many others seem to have, as evidenced on Pattern Review), so kind of ignored the instructions and wung it. (Is that a word? I don’t think so, but it should be.)

The shoes go really well, don’t you think? Best part: I *won* them! In a twitter contest! They’re by Ciel Bleu, a fairly new shoe company. I had ‘liked’ them on Facebook, and one day there was a post from them that they were giving away a pair of these shoes to someone who tweeted a favourite quote. Since they didn’t yet have many followers on Facebook or Twitter, I figured my chances were pretty good. Fifty-fifty, as it turned out, as only two people tweeted, and I won the shoes! Woo-hoo! The shoes originally came with a nude-coloured ribbon, but I picked out some coral ribbon from Mokuba for a slightly different look. Love them!

I was really inspired by Clio’s colour-blocked version of this dress, and had bought some mustard yellow fabric for a contrasting colour but decided against it in the end. Perhaps another, colour blocked version of this dress is in my future!

*Here’s a pic in which the colour is true.