Flower Box Dress

Jumping with Sartorial Joy

This is the Flower Box Dress as it's flowery and has box pleats, sort of.  I saw a project on Burdastyle called The Imperfect Alice Dress, by member wonderlandalys and thought it looked great, and with the weather getting warmer it would be nice to have a new sun dress. 
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/the-imperfect-alice-dress
She had used Butterick B5317, so I purchased the pattern online for about £8 then set to work making a bunch of other stuff...ah to bethe kind of person who can stick to one project at a time... But then womderlandalys posted a new variation; The Love Letter Dress and I decided to get on with my own version.
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/the-love-letter-dress

Well the pattern is easy enough, but I find patterns very tricky.  I was musing over it as I was sewing everything together wrongly- when you have made up your own pattern there is no right and wrong as you're just making it up, and at the end of the process you can decide whether you like it or not.  Although this method does often lead to a lot of 'nots' it can be less demoralising than using a proper pattern, which often works out better but may have a list of 25 steps to follow.  That's 25 (at least) things to do right, and ways to go wrong.  And I did go wrong many times- not helped by the fact that my fabric is the same front and back so I kept mixing my pattern pieces up, and sewing back to front and left to right.

But my biggest mistake came right at the start, although I didn't realise until right at the end (of part one as it turned out) I picked the wrong size pattern to cut out, doh! I looked at the size guide and it told me my waist was a 10, and my hips were an 18- which didn't seem quite right to me!  But then I realised that Butterick is American and there sizes are numbered bigger to UK sizes to their 14 would be our 10, and since Im usually a 10 I'll cut that out.  Well the pattern people must have thought ahead, or have a UK section, or not be American at all because quite clearly the finished dress was 2 sizes too big.  So I had to unpick it all, cut the pieces down to the right size, then resew. 

With all the extra sewing the pulling apart the fabric took a bit of a battering and I started to go a bit insane.  I started to hate the sight of the flowers, and pink, and my sewing maching...and was worried after all the extra work I would have something I didn't actually like.  But, thankfully, a good nights sleep- and a trip to the shop to get a zip- cured all ills and I really like it.  It's not perfect; it's coming apart a little here and there but just superficially and considering the tortured way the pieces got cut out and resewed I'm actually really pleased.   I have bought some blue upolstery fabric and blue jersey to make the dress again, I think it will look totally different.