Hello again. 

I am back with Surprise Surprise!!! yet another hack of New Look 6123.

I guess I'm a bit of a lazy sewer. 

Well more of a lazy fitter, once I get a pattern fitting well I tend to make a few versions (or in this case alot of versions) so I can avoid the hassle of fitting again for a while.

I originally set out to copy this dress that I had seen on pinterest

I really liked the neckline pleats. So I took the front bodice piece from NL6123 which has waist and bust darts. To recreate the pleats on my Pinterest dress, I drew lines from the bust point up to where I wanted the pleats to fall at the neckline.Then I did a bit of slashing and spreading. I closed the darts at the waist and took some of the width out of the bust darts, which allowed the slashes towards the neckline to open up.

After a bit of trial and error on paper , I was able to work out how I wanted the pleats to form.

So when I headed to my sewing room to start this I realised that the blue crepe I had selected for this was an excellent match for a remnant of cotton sateen from Fabric Godmother. Happy accident. 

I decided to shortened the bodice and make a waistband. 

 

I love how this dress turned out, it is quite dressy and I wore it to my niece's christening where I had Godmother duties to fulfil!

Here a photo of me in my frock taken by my sister who was barking commands "No, No, No this way" "Suck it in" "Bend your leg!" Ha Sisters :)

In other news, I have signed up for Handmade Jane's OWOP challenge. Bet you can't work out what pattern I will be using.

See you all later 

The many faces of New Look 6123

You could say that I kinda love this pattern. I have made this many times and there will be many many more versions. It comes with two bodice variations, two skirt variations. three sleeve options and a skirt flounce. But this a great basic bodice and skirt pattern and I have been using it almost like a sloper.

For the first version I used a grey with black hearts wool fabric from ebay store iana fabrics. I lowered the neckline slightly and went with the straight skirt with the sleeve flanges (odd word that flangeeeeeee). Apologies for these photos, my mannequin isn't quite as busty or hippy as I am. It is fully lined and has an invisible zip. I'm rather proud of my zipper and dart matching on this dress. This wool was lovely to work with and pressed really well . My flanges look a bit droopy here but haven't noticed this IRL. This is probably cos I haven't interfaced them. Interfacing and me have failed to see eye to eye so far, always a bit cardboardy......

Version 2 was inspired (or pretty much copied) from this dress that I saw on Diary of a sewing fantatic. I already had the fabric in my stash but was unsure what to do with it.

As you can see, I used the sleeveless bodice and straight skirt and added waist tabs. 

The bodice and the skirt were joined and the back darts of each merged to form fish eye darts. The waist tabs were taken from Simplicity 2588, incorporated into these darts and attached at the front with some buttons saved from an old skirt.
I tweaked the bust dart placement by moving them about an inch towards the centre front on this dress. Once again this one is fully lined. The pattern doesn't include linings pieces but I always like to add them especially to a dress like this for work as dresses sticking to my tights drives me slightly mad. The pattern matching worked out very well especially as I squeezed this out of just a yard of fabric.

Okay just one more today if anyone is actually still with me.
I used a ponte jersey for this one, adding cap sleeves with pleats at the top. I also added a zip but really don't need it as this pulls on and off easily. A very easy and comfy dress to wear.

Okay thanks for reading and I will be back soon with more.