It looks better on me, I SWEAR!

....See, what had happened was....

I was on the subway headed to work this past Monday morning. From the corner of my eye, I see this woman in a really cute white dress. Now, what caught my eye was really the color. Just white, but that really bright and 'just bought' white, you know? Anyway, it was a simple sheath with, thin self-fabric shoulder straps.

Uber-typical dress for running around the city on a hot summers day, right? Right!

But then, she turns around and I see that the back of the dress covers her entire upper back and shoulder! Basically a boat neck line draped across her back neck and shoulders from HPS to HPS.

I thought, I.HAVE.TO.DO.THAT!!

SSOOO...Now, I don't pretend to have any deep knowledge of pattern-making, but I muddle through this one by taking a dress from my closet and 'rubbing off' the armseye curve and a bit of the shoulder slope.After I got that initial template, I measured my bust line and cross back then squared down from the armhole opening to the hem line.

For the front, I measured down from my HPS to about 1/2 way down the armseye (about 7") and then squared across to CF.For the back, I squared from the very top of the armseye curve.

I laid out the fabric (cheapy linen from Fulton Fabrics, 3$ a yard) and placed the pattern on a 'eye-balled' bias.

In effort to avoid binding the top edge of the front piece, I doubled over the corner of the fabric so it over-lapped to about my bust line (I just serged the edge for a clean finish.)
However, I wasn't thinking that far ahead when I laid the back piece out, so I ended up sacrificing a bit of the neck line height and folded the cut piece under.

I cut bias strips, from the scrap fabric, to bind the armhole opening as well as to cover the missing top half of the front shoulder.

Once I put the dress together, I found that 7" down from HPS was ....uummmmm.... a litttttllllllle.... low....
... ahem....

So I've added another inch to the top of the front pattern. Now the binding strap will reach 6" down from HPS.

I also found that the cross back shoulder measurement was a bit wide and the straps didn't sit on my shoulder that way I wanted.
So, I trimmed about 3/4" from the total measurement.With those tweaks, this is what I am hoping for...I'm going to cut and sew another one today.... Will post more pics later.

I have to say, considering I only saw the dress for the corner of my eye for about 2 seconds, I can't promise that this is what HER dress actually looked like. But it is what I remember!



Holla!!