Hello again! I took a break over the weekend and wore store-bought clothes (remember, my challenge was for 5 days a week). But I’m back on the wagon with a self-stitched dress.

This is made from navy jersey knit, a fabric kindly given to me by a sewing friend at church who was clearing out for a move. I got the idea for this when Colette Patterns released a dress pattern called Moneta, which is very similar to this dress. At the time I was also thinking about working up a good basic tee pattern, and so thought this dress would be a good outlet for trying out that idea, since the top part is basically a modified tee shirt.

There’s something a little nostalgic about this design, too. When my sister and I were little, we had what we called ‘play dresses’, which my mom had made. The top part was one of our old tee shirts, cut off, with the skirt made from the midsection of one of my dad’s old tee shirts. Because they were made from cast-offs, it didn’t matter if they got messed up from playing.

Naturally, because this dress is really a glorified tee shirt, it’s very comfortable. It passes the ‘would you travel in it?’ test – not of course if you would categorically never wear a dress to travel, but if you would, still not every dress is up to it. I think this one also dresses up quite nicely with a belt and scarf or cardigan.

Because I made this from free fabric, I was constrained by yardage and thus didn’t quite get the skirt shape I would have wanted. Were I to do it again I would adjust that. The inside waist seam is also rather poorly sewn…but I’m happy enough for now.

Taking photos today was quite a challenge. I’m not a great photographer anyway, but the sun! It didn’t lend itself well to photos that enabled studying of a garment; mostly photos of haloed, legless jubilation: