Vogue 9112 - Maxified!

Pattern: heavily modified Vogue 9112
Fabric: www.ankaramalkia.com
Success in making a tent dress depends on choosing great fabric.  Find a fabric you love.

A few months ago, after I'd spent my fabric allowance for the month, Mrs. Roni Gordon posted this gorgeous bit of shimmery gold/purple Ankara. I needed it. Needed it enough to cut into the food budget for a few weeks. The large bold design called for a maxi dress, and the only real decision was what *kind* of maxi dress?

The idea of interrupting the Happy Giant Circle of Color was unthinkable. And the moment I realized this would be a high-neckline project, I thought of V9112.

As a jigsaw puzzle of fabric, V9112 is fun. However, I don't feel the assorted small shapes really contribute to the appearance of the dress. The ah-MAZING thing about this dress is the collar and the billowy bottom half. 

Changes to pattern: 

• Collar: Cut two pieces and sew them together. The pattern calls for just a single thickness, but I feel the double adds character.
• Armhole: Raised bottom 1.5". Made w/o alteration, the armhole just barely hides your bra. I've lost 15 pounds in the last few months, so I'd rather start with more coverage to allow future alterations.
• Back: Traced the right back pattern piece onto my giant roll of paper. Then I cut the entire back on the vertically folded fabric - in order to capture those fabulous circles.
• Front: I used the top front pattern piece and folded it in half vertically, to get the neckline, shoulder, and arm correct. 
• Length: Measuring how long the dress needed to be from my skinniest point, I drew as much of a circle skirt as I could. Then I stepped back to think about how to work in more fullness.

The collar was cut to work with the upper part of the dress. The final touch was including horsehair ribbon to the bottom hem, to help display the fullness without me having to twirl :-D

One other tweak was adding two tuck darts to the front. The below left image shows these in place. The one downside was that they created definite vertical lines that took away from the "tent" appearance of the bottom. So I removed them for a final garment that makes me happy - below right.