Simplicity 9880 (1995): The Grunge/prairie horror, also known as the Tantrum Dress

Listening: Linzay Young and Joel Savoy, Linzay Young & Joel Savoy (2009). 

The Valentine's fabric never did show up.  Nothing like being dumped right before Valentine's Day, right?  Even if it is only by your fabric.

The plan now is to work on another project.  This is the dog/cat/child principle: If you pay a lot of attention to a different one, the one you wanted in the first place is guaranteed to show up and pester you.

This is a terrible pattern in the first place, and I'm doing some alterations--a lot of alterations, actually--on the fly, so it's a surefire fail in the making.  Whatever.  It's weird fabric out of my stash.  If this is as close as I ever get to being self-destructive, we should all be so lucky, right?

So . . . the pattern:


Yeah.  Big, floppy, dress with huge--18-inch, I think they were--circumference sleeves.  Right.  Looks fine if you're six feet tall and 115 pounds.  Doesn't look so good if you're . . . not.   Looks like maternity wear, actually, if you're not.

No zipper; this one has a button at the nape of the neck, which is fine except that buttons in the back tend to pull on my hair.

1) Change to buttoning up the front.
2) Add an inset belt.  I still have a waist.  I'll wear the baggy version when I'm older.
3) Adding an inset belt will most likely necessitate doing a full-bust adjustment, not because I'm full-busted but because it will need the extra volume and length to tuck around the body and into the band.
4) Buttoning up the front will mean the skirt needs a placket.
5) Holy Mother of God, trim down those sleeves . . .
6) . . . and the sleeve caps . . .
7) . . . and do cuffs like a normal person instead of those fruity little wrist ruffles

In pictorial form, the bodice adjustments looked like this (I also took 1/2 inch out under each arm, tapering to the waist, because the first test pooched out):


In this case, the full-bust adjustment doesn't get rotated into a bust dart because I'm going to gather the bodice into the inset belt.  This really only works well with minor-to-moderate FBA's; you get too much fabric to gather nicely pretty quickly if you have to do a significant FBA.  If you do, it would be better to add a bust dart to take up at least some of the alteration. 

I waffled on adding trim but then decided to go for it.  

Many steps later, I'm this far, with the trim and facings applied, and the bodice gathered into the inset belt.  This shows the color of the fabric pretty well, too:  


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