Trying out a new dress

A few weeks ago, I was perusing Google Reader and came across a blog entry on Grosgrain in which she referred to a dress she'd previously made on the blog, the Anda dress by Burda. After traveling through a series of links, I discovered a series, which she apparently did before I started following her blog, called Frock by Friday. One of the frocks was the Anda dress. I was immediately hooked.

I've never made an item of adult clothing besides a pair of yoga pants, but the dress was labeled as "novice," and I figured I had the blog entries to guide me as well. It also helped that I immediately knew which fabrics I wanted to use (and already owned!). The dress calls for light or silky fabrics, but it was such a basic dress, and I was looking for something a bit more casual, so I thought I'd try some quilting cottons instead. It also only calls for one fabric, but there's a tie and casing across the middle, making for an obvious place to split it into two fabrics, so I thought I'd give it a try. I chose Kona Coal for the bottom and the Stripes Summer fabric from the Mod Green Pod Free to Grow collection for Robert Kaufman (introduced here).

I've been working on it during my lunch breaks, following the pattern and blog posts. It's getting really close to being done, and I'm planning to finish it up this weekend. I stitched the fabrics together along the waistline (where they'll be covered by the casing for a tie) and hemmed the neckline and armholes. The pattern says you can use binding along the neckline and armholes, but I thought it looked better without it.

I'll warn you if you're interested in the pattern that it runs HUGE. You'll notice the dress still looks big and boxy now, but that's because it doesn't have the ties yet.

 But I only got to that point after cutting this much off the original dress:

At least it made cute scraps. :) I'm definitely looking forward to finishing this one up, as I'm hoping to wear it to my sister's rehearsal dinner next week.

I'm still debating on what to do for the casing. My original thought was more of the gray to just blend it with the dress, but I'm also considering the Scroll Spring fabric from the Free to Grow collection, you know, to draw out the yellow in the strips.

What do you think? Too much?