Well, you would not believe the trouble that a perfect picture of a dress creates in one’s head. SHEESH!  The lovely picture below is completely contrived – y’know, the tilt-your-head-45-degrees-stick-your-chin-out-suck-your-cheeks-in nonsense that photographers used to tell you to get that perfect angle for your annual school mugshot kind of contrived – in order to get the most flattering view.  I saw a video once of Victoria Beckham getting ready for a photo op:  she handed her bag to an assistant and then carefully adjusted her profile so the photographer would catch the perfect angle.  I guess if I practiced “THE POSE” it would arrive easily and perfectly every time!!!  🙂

I really like this dress.  It’s a discontinued Vogue Patterns basic dress pattern 8182 that I’ve had in my pattern stash for years.

The silk was purchased from my local Fabricland because it’s again that green/purple colourway which I am so totally in love with.

What a production fitting this dress!  I’ve always loved the silhouette of dresses like these, but I could never actually PURCHASE one RTW.  I mean, what’s the point when it doesn’t work, even with double-sided tape to prevent a wardrobe malfunction?!  So I decided I’d make one – that way I’m guaranteed the perfect fit through the time-consuming yet rewarding art of pattern alterations.

Well, there’s a story behind this pattern’s adjustments. I had my DH use up his (construction company’s) supply of duct tape making an exact copy of my lovely curvy self. Needless to say, he took his sweet time and thoroughly enjoyed himself – making sure everything was hugging the curves properly, of course – and I was horrified when he finally cut me out of it and I had a good look at the size and proportions of it stuck over top of my old dress form. YIKES! Ah, well. At least it would do the trick for fitting this bodice egg-ZACKTLY to my shape. I didn’t believe my eyes, though, so I measured myself and compared the dress form’s measurements. Yup. Dead on.
So I cut a muslin – minus the skirt – and altered it in my usual slashing and expanding technique. This involved:

1. adding 2″ of length to the bodice over the bust point so that the bottom of the bodice would meet the waistband actually at my waist and not 1/2″ up my bust. I tapered the extra length to meet the original pattern’s side length. Here’s a picture of the technique on another dress pattern that required fitting of an upper bodice into a fitted waistband.

2. adding 1″ of width through the bust point to ensure proper coverage without the aid of double-sided garment tape when wearing it.

I do love the results, though, so I intend to use this pattern again at some point.