new fabric = new dress

I bought this fabric yesterday in The Fabric Store.  It is crinkle cotton and made in India.  This is the stuff I saw before Christmas and thought it would be ideal for copying a dress I have as it's the same type of fabric.  It was on sale at 30% off so I got it for $12 per metre.  I got two and a half metres and some matching thread so all up, the dress should cost me $34 to make. That's not counting the man hours it will take me to make it, which will no doubt turn it into a thousand-dollar dress....oh, well.

Here's a picture of the new fabric:

And the existing dress I want to copy.

This is a French Connection dress I got in the sale and after the first couple of wears it was starting to look very fragile at the seams. The new fabric is the same stuff and quite delicate - I'll just have to be gentle with washing...

So I made a pattern yesterday - a piece for the sleeves, a piece for the body and another piece for the flouncy skirt trim at the bottom.  I'm sure there's another word for that but I've no idea what it is. This looks reasonably simple to recreate but it has been difficult to get exact measurements from the original without taking it all apart.  I've made my pattern based on the assumption that the body is a plain rectangle with cut outs to make the armholes.  The sleeves and shoulders are rectangles with cut outs for the armholes and the skirt trim is another rectangle gathered at the join with the body part.  It then takes its shape by adding elastic at the neckline and a belt at the waist. Sounds too easy. Let's see shall we.....

It worked!  The finished dress: