Lessons Learned??????

Do you think so? What a crazy idea it was to fall for this designer dress? So, who's the teacher, the dress or me? I say this dress has taught me a few things!
                                    
                                                               Peter Pilotto Dress

Lesson 1 - Before taking the plunge, make sure the chosen item is simple enough. The way that I went about deciding how to bring everything together was a bit time consuming.

Lesson 2 - Make sure the designer hasn't created his/her own fabric. That's exactly what happened. After deciding that I wanted to try duplicating it, looking at fabrics online for days and not finding anything similiar, then going back and taking a closer look at the details, I read that the designer created the fabric.

That was alright, with the exception of the time spent not sewing. So, thinking this dress looks like squares, I ordered the houndstooth fabric. One day I'm looking at the details with the enlargement from the website and oh, my goodness, it's diamond shapes with teal diamond inserts. Pure shock!

Lesson 3 - If the item is complicated, make sure that you've experienced creating your own pattern/s. One thing I knew was that I could use TNT Simplicity 8523 which included a v-neck a the baseline. Then I tried my hand at measuring and drawing the strips for the front bodice. I drew a pattern for the area of the waist to the hipline, and the part below the hipline. (Reminder to self: Don't forget to add the seam allowances!)

                                                 
                                                   The pieces for top with seam allowances.

           This is where I started with the top. I decided to use bolder colors instead of pastels.

 I decided to add the black in the front as the belt since the back was solid. The colors started to become too much for me. I didn't think I could take another minute of sewing strips together nor could I stand to see any additional colors on this dress. This took days and almost brain freeze.

So, I decided to fiish this and make it my own, for sure, by adding a ruffle to the hemline and the sleeves.

Do you think I might need a little more experience with plaids when it comes to deciding where to cut the pattern so the invisible zipper is completed where it fall on the black or the white line? Who knows?