A dress and the study of a sleeve.

I started this at the end of last summer. I made the bodice in no time flat. It was one of those blessed projects that just comes together exactly the way you envisioned it on the first try.
The skirt was another story.
After my first attempt at the skirt failed miserably I put it away and forgot it for the winter.
When spring came, I gave it another go and this time the results were wearable!

I bought the last little bit of the floral fabric, not more than a yard and a half, with a top in mind. When I started sewing though, visions of maxi dresses danced through my head and I followed them. A risky decision with the small amount of fabric I had.
That's where the trouble with the skirt came in. Trying to achieve maxi-mum (I crack myself up) results with such limited resources was tricky tricky stuff.
The wide gray band at the bottom is thanks to the lack of any more yellow floral. I like it though. I like it a lot even. If I set upon this project again with more fabric, I'd make the skirt a little wider but otherwise I'd do it the same way.

I love how the sleeves came out. I cut a dolman sleeve for the front (Excuse the wrinkled state of the dress please, I've been wearing it all day)

 

And a raglan sleeve for the back, and somehow they fit together. It was a miraculous sewing event.

I can't take credit for the genius cross-bred sleeve idea though. The truth is, I copied it from an Old Navy top.
Speaking of cross bred sleeves, I had a Math prof at Utah State (an attractive South African fellow) who couldn't have owned more than 3 shirts (and that's being generous). Maybe he owned more, and just never chose to wear any of the others. I suppose I'll never know. Anyway, one of the shirts had the most interesting sleeves I've ever seen.
From the front it looked like an average raglan sleeved button down. From the back, it appeared a similarly average button down, this time with a set in sleeve.
The front of the sleeve was raglan, the back, set in. It was seriously. so. cool.
I sat there in class listening to him explain probability theories and blah-bidy blah in his hot accent and sketched pattern pieces, working out how to re-create that sleeve.
Yeah, I'm a geek.
I never tried making the shirt though. As interesting as it was, I honestly didn't care for it aesthetically. Maybe all the studying of that shirt I did in math class is the reason the sleeves on this dress worked so smoothly on the first try.
If that's the case, Math 1030 was time well spent.