The Mamma Mia Dress

This dress has a good story, and you know I love a good story.

I made this baby back in January.  I was going to New York for the first time to visit with 2 friends who moved back east.  We were going to have a girls weekend in the city and see Mamma Mia!

Wearing my dress to work today and rocking these awesome tights!  Sorry for the messy room, we're doing a lot of household rearranging.

I'm a San Diego girl and my idea of "winter" is not real winter.  But be damned if I was going to be under dressed at a play! So I whipped up this dress.  And when I say I whipped it up, I mean whipped it up.  The night before I was supposed to go to New York, I sewed most of the dress (instead of packing) while hanging out with the neighbors who came over.  Then, the next morning I got up and packed, hemmed my dress, and brought a needle and thread with me and hand basted the collar at my friend's house the night before the play.

But lucky for me this was seriously the easiest dress I ever made!

Here I am on the right wearing my dress in Times Square before Mamma Mia (under a coat, scarf, and hat, and over tights, leggings, socks, boots, and a long sleeve T shirt):

And now a word about the pattern (Butterick 5523)...

This was my first knit garment.  I was unreasonably afraid of knits for a long time.  I don't know why, this was insanely easy. I followed the pattern, except I found the waist elastic to be unnecessary (and I was in a rush!). I also left off the tab detail on the back.  Ironically, that's what drew me to this pattern, but mine wasn't coming out right and I decided I didn't care.

Overall, I'm super happy with this dress, and I got tons of compliments!

In the meantime I'm in the cutting stages of my Pendrell blouse.  I hate cutting out patterns.  I have a vintage pattern from the 70s that's precut.  I guess that's the advantage of buying one size.  Cutting is just so tedious and has no gratification!  But I have a 3 day weekend this weekend and with any luck I'll be sharing finished pictures soon!