Stripey Stripes

so for my latest dress i was inspired by the renfrew tank dress Andrea from foursquarewalls made.  i love how it's simple, yet sassy.  plus, i've been needing more dresses for summer so my wheels got to turnin'.

first off, i went to Girl Charlee to get some cute fabric for my new dress.  i saw plenty that i liked but the striped fabric Andrea used really caught my eye.  so i ordered two yards.  i'll say, too, that Heather is awesome at providing high quality products and delivering fast!

i found Tally's Treasury while doing a search for a pattern i wanted to use for my dress and from her post it inspired me to make a dress without a pattern.  so i went and grabbed one of my dresses that has a shape and fit that i love and traced that to make my new dress.  so simple!  why didn't i think of this before?! duh!

now that my farbic was in it was time to make my dress.  to start, since my fabric is striped, i took the extra time to make sure all my stripes lined up.  yeah it was a little tedious to do that but the end results were fantastic. 

since the skirt on the dress i traced was wider than my fabric i traced the bodice of the dress and freehanded a simple a-line skirt.  to hem the skirt i folded up the amount i wanted and used my good friend stitch witchery to hold it. 

once i tried the finished dress on i added side bust darts to get rid of the gaping.  to finish the neck and armhole edges i attempted to do the technique Andrea did on her dress, by adding a band of the fabric attached to the raw edges and sew in place.  it worked out great on the armholes, but it just made the neck edge gape more.  so i simply folded the banded edge under and used my good ol' stitch witchery to hold it in place. 

once the dress was finished i went back and added side pockets...using this great tut i found over at Tally's Treasury.  first time for side seam pockets!  i'm kind of obsessed now with doing side seam pockets since i know they are so easy! and for my pockets pattern i simply drew a shape along the edge of my paper and made it have a 6" opening.  voila!  that dress was simple enough!

and since i ordered two yards i had a little over 5/8 of a yard left over.  what did i do with it, you ask?  well i made a skirt of course!  two garments, two yards of fabric!!

for my skirt i just did a simple a-line cut.  i wanted to do a circle skirt but there wasn't enough fabric :(  once again, i took the time to line up my stripes and i inserted side seam pockets.  to finish it off i did a white elastic waistband.  i got lazy and for my skirt i didn't do a hem.