Another version of Simplicity 2497 by Cynthia Rowley

Originally I made the sleeveless version with the ruffle neck in green silk dupioni (see here). (Slapdash Sewist, Trena made a stunning version of this recently, go here if you haven't seen it).

I also like the look of the drawings for the other views so thought I would test it in a remnant of embroidered cotton I had in my stash. I was a little short on fabric so I had to skip the puffy sleeves and just used the sleeve lining piece. I also added a band of plain black cotton around the hem (the pattern is the right length, I just didn't have enough fabric). If I had planned this ahead I probably would have done the neckband in black also but this was whizzed up just before my easter holidays and I was in no mood to do any unpicking.

Since I had made this before I only tried it on in the final stages and found that it was too big on the waist which made it look really frumpy and sad - the cotton has a lot more "give" than the dupioni I used in my first version. If I didn't want to unpick the neckline you can bet there was no way I was unpicking the zipper and waistband so I just added a couple of tucks in the front of the waistband.

Then in an attempt to make it look intentional I sewed some black sequins in the middle of the waistband and inbetween some of the embroidery lines on the neckline - basically until I ran out of sequins. Of course it would have been much quicker to do the unpicking I was avoiding than to handsew all those sequins, but I quite enjoyed doing it.

Despite the sequins this cotton dress will be great for hot summer days, not that it feels like we are ever going to have any. These pictures were taken on my easter vacation which seems a long long time ago!