So I've been following Livebird's amazing creations for Dressember that she has posted on this blog for a few weeks now and have been most impressed, so I've jumped in whole heartedly (just gotta join Flickr now). I have made a stack of dresses lately (seen over at my blog) but this is the first vintage one I've made in a while, and I finally have something worthy of posting here.
I made a 1970 Simplicity dress pattern with a few modifications to cater for my ginormous belly - I am over 8 months pregnant so I definately needed some changes to make it work. It was pretty simple to modify it though, and I find vintage patterns tend to have a lot of ease built in to the patterns in the first place anyway so they are usually a bit more generously sized. Anyway I slashed and spread the front dress pattern piece to add a triangle shaped wedge bit from just under the bust to the hem so that the dress would have enough space to fit around my protrusion, I moved the centre back zipper to side zip and cut the back piece on the fold.
And here's the finished product:
I've very happy with the way this turned out in all aspects, it only took about 3 hours to make from cutting out to hemming (which I did on the machine so it was quicker), I used fabric and a zipper from the stash so it didn't cost me anything (material that's been in the stash so long that I can't remember how I much paid for it doesn't count as costing anything anymore!) and it's a nice breezy summer dress for when the sun finally comes back out here in downtown Sydney.