Halfway through a dress & decided to jump ship

A lot of girlies in the sewing world I'm sure are familiar with Gertie from Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. 

If not, this little lady is a blogger and fellow sewing enthusiast from New York. She with her amaaaazing sewing skillz has a pattern line "Patterns by Gertie" from Butterick, you know, the one that's been around since forever. Anyway, I bought a couple of her patterns in July that I was really excited about. When I first heard about her patterns finally being available for purchase I hurried my lil butt down to Hancock's only to be heartbroken that they weren't there at all. Last month I walked into that fabric store with absolutely no plan (as usual), came across it again it in the pattern book, searched for it again and was shocked that it was available in my size! Girl, I don't know what I was thinking... there were about 432525 end-of-season sales going on and I must've grabbed the first two fabric bolts I could get my hands on! One was a red-white-and-blue floral pattern (kinds cow-girlish but cute) and the other was a thin burnt orange/sienna sort of color. Very fall appropriate. I made a shirt dress with that, which I'll talk about later. (you can see the fabric I bought HERE)

I started out with B5814, a very Joan Holloway sort of dress. I never used a muslin before OR boning of any kind. (GASP) Actually I've never had to drape anything either... So this pattern was a new challenge for me. Surprisingly though, the instructions were sooo simple to follow and easy to understand! As with pretty much all Butterick patterns, so I should have expected that. Gertie also has blog posts for each of her patterns that you can kinda follow along with and I highly recommend you check that out before you do ANYTHING! Nothing suck worse than ruining a potentially beautiful garment #amirightladies?

I knew what adjustment I needed to make before I even opened the package lol. Being a member of the flat-chest tribe the super-low cut neckline was gonna have to be raised up quite a bit and the shoulders would have to be more.... on my shoulders lol. But I was determined to make it work.

Tim Gunn, can we please have a lunch date that ends with you editing my wardrobe?

So after about two days of putting it together, adjusting, and re-adjusting I got it to fit exactly as I wanted it to. Only problem was the skirt... There's nothing wrong with it, but paired with the bodice it's entirely too sexy for me. I can be cute... I have that down. But I cannot pull off 'sexy.' SO I plan on doing some kind of pleated skirt. 

Maybe a full box pleated skirt? I'm thinking mid-thigh? Knee-length? Or should I just make a peplum top out of it instead? What do you think?

Oh, one more problem... because I jumped ship and decided to go ahead and make a completely different dress from the remaining fabric...  I now have to look for some matching fabric to go with it.

But the other dress is cute though! I had just enough uncut fabric remaining to make a lovely little dress that took hardly any time at all :) I'm pretty pleased with it. I did a post on it Monday in case you missed it...