A fabric that does all the work

I first saw this fabric on Gigi’s blog and fell in love with it! It’s from Gorgeous Fabrics, which I visit often, but somehow missed this one. The swatch pictured just didn’t do it justice. Gigi’s post convinced me to buy it, and then Cidell comes along and makes a dress from it too! Well, here I come with another dress!

Here it is on me, thanks to the self-timer:

I think I did OK with the print placement (let me know if you disagree). The fabric has those black and magenta bars in a rectangular grid pattern, which makes layouts tricky. What I did was fold the fabric and match up the bars by pinning them together, and then cut my front and back pieces:

I strategically placed one bar across the midriff, which I love because it provides design interest without hardly any work! It goes all the way around and lines up perfectly. I lined it up along the petite adjustment lines printed on the pattern. In fact, it looks as though there are no side seams at all! I also used that bar for the neck band. The one thing I didn’t do was match the prints on the sleeves. I did this because that left me with enough fabric left over to make a top.

Here is the pattern I used:

This is Simplicity 2850, view A, sorta. I left off the pockets and cut off the sleeve at one of the tuck lines used for view C.  Here’s the review.