Last Sew For Victory Dress: Tossed Flowers

My final Sew for Victory project!  I'm calling it the Tossed Flowers dress, because I'm super original like that, but it is Bright Week and my brain is tired, so we're just going to roll with it. 

 I made the New England dress pattern again, and made the changes I noted in the first go-round--interfacing the yoke pieces, and using tailor's chalk to transfer the pattern markings instead of chalk marker, and it came out even better this time!  

I think the fit is even better on top, and the interfacing definitely helped.  

I still need to figure out a neater way to join the facings at the shoulder, but that is a problem for another dress, because I'll probably make this one again.  

The construction went a little faster this time, since I understood the process, and the zipper insertion went better after a false start, so all good things.  

I made the self-belt by interfacing a 3" wide piece of fabric, and then seaming one side and turning it right-side out, like a tie, which worked okay, but was a royal pain to get turned right side out with the fusible.  It is functional.  I used a butterscotch plastic buckle that perfectly coordinated with the yellow flowers for my  belt, and added a big ol' honking snap to the end to keep it from flying apart at an inopportune moment. 

On a 1 1/4" belt--just for scale.

 And, zee finished dress (interspersed with some random flower and herb pictures from my back patio, because, hello spring!):

I should take a minute to talk about the fabric drama of this dress.  I ordered the fabric at the same time as the Hello Birdie! dress fabric because they were both on crazy good sale, and both arrived a few weeks ago, but when I went to prewash them, I noticed that half my yardage of this fabric was missing the yellow printing on the flowers!  So half was red, cream, navy, and  yellow flowers, and the other half was just red, cream, and navy.  

It wasn't nearly enough to make a dress out of the correctly printed portion, so I called Joann's customer service line, and they said they would fix it and send out a replacement length for the amount that was printed incorrectly.  I cut out the bodice and skirt facings out of the fabric I did have, and then waited a week.  The replacement package arrived, and they had sent me the Hello Birdie fabric instead!  

I called again, and they were so sorry, and said I could keep the extra fabric, and express shipped the replacement, which arrived just as we were departing for the latter half of Holy Week.  Probably just as well, since I would have been tempted to pre-wash and cut it out as soon as it arrived, which I did on Bright Monday instead.

I made the hem a little wider this time, and shortened the sleeves about 1/2", which I think I like better.

 

 

I love daffodils--so bright and cheery.  Our local hardware store had a bunch of spring plants out this week, so I picked up a few things for the back patio; we'll see how they fare back there.

 

 Warm weather shoes and ashy legs.