Fooling around with the Kristen dress

I pretty much enjoyed doing three pants patterns and comparing them and might do more of that kind of thing in the future. 

I love fooling around with new patterns. 

Right now I have some semi-duds, a top and a skirt, both new patterns, I will talk about in the next week or so, but right now I want to share my experiments with the Kristen dress.

I originally made this dress here and really liked it. 

I have been meaning to get back to it and had two fabulous pieces of ponte from Mood I wanted to cut into. Nothing, nothing, nothing is as energizing as good fabric, in happy colours, and a pattern you can trust.

Note to the audience, for whatever reason the colours are not quite so blazing in real life, and yes my photographer should tell me my hair got messed up during the quick changes. 

Done.

O.K. The first dress was in my coral ponte from Mood, such nice hand to this fabric it more or less makes a person who has been stuck with too much crap fabric in the past,  to just cry.

Unfortunately the same person did not have the brains to buy quite enough. So there was some piecing done adding a seam under the bust which I hope looks like it is supposed to be there. 

With this new seam I decided the darts might look busy so I eased in the dart to the side seam with perhaps some success or perhaps not.

Also because the fabric was beefy (you will know exactly what I mean by that) I took the side seams in a lot to eliminate the A shape. 

And because I have a chicken neck I also added a silk scarf I got at my vintage second hand source.

I could be told to tone it down, good advice, if I were a toned down kind of girl. Which I am not. You will figure that out for yourself when you look at these shots and I trust someone somewhere is doing my toning down for me. It is probably very much needed.

A shot outside the sewing room I decided to do because the colour is more accurate and it shows the neckline without the scarf.

Second, I decided to try Pam's collar ideas, linked a few posts back, in another ponte. Because this would obviously make it a pull over dress I eliminated the back seam and the zipper, which I realize could be done in any version of this dress.

I love the collar but probably should have interfaced it. I didn't because in the planning stages I was concerned about having all those layers of ponte making a bulky collar anyway. So the collar sort of flops a bit but I am fine with that.

I love, love this dress. Which BTW I made with the original side seams. You can see the difference not taking it in makes.

I am so, so happy to have a good TNT basic knit dress to fool around with and you can be sure there is a lot more fooling around in my future.