Also known as the dress I was going to wear to the dinner.  I attended a professional association dinner on Friday night, and early last week I made this dress to wear to it.

Then I read the weather forecast – and took a good hard look at the back of the dress on me and the need to wear “suck it all in” underwear with it – and made an alternative dress.  I did a whole lot of swapping from one dress to the other and back again when I was getting ready for the dinner, and in the end I went with the alternative dress.  Here’s a photo of the back of the Marita, in the interests of full sewing and fitting disclosure.

But despite all of that, and the fact that I didn’t wear this dress to the dinner after all, it was lots of fun to sew! The pattern is the StyleARC Marita dress. I made size 12, which is my usual StyleARC size, but this is pretty tight. It’ still comfortable, because it’s a knit, but I need to stand up very straight with my tummy pulled in when wearing this – preferably with smoothing underwear as well.

See that groovy cowl neckline and wrap type of effect in the front? SO easy. This is a simple dress to sew – actually, they claim that you can sew it in under an hour, and I think they are right. It was mainly constructed on the overlocker, with the machine used for just a few seams and the twin needled hems. The fabric came from Darn Cheap Fabrics. How incredibly green is that green!

I suppose now that I’ll need to take some photos of the dress that I DID wear to the dinner!  And Sewjourning friends that wear a size 12 or thereabouts – I think that you should try this dress on – I reckon that this style would look GREAT on a couple of you!