Dress for myself inspired by Pinterest

I made a dress for myself this week to wear at our family pictures this morning. I bought two lengths of fabric so I can make this dress in two colors. This is the first experimental one. My goal was to get out all the kinks on this dress so that the second one will be perfect. I am fairly happy with how this turned out.

Here is the shirt that I found on Pinterest that inspired this dress.

To come up with the pattern, I used a shirt and another dress of mine and traced them until I had a shape I was comfortable with. It ended up fitting pretty accurately and I just had to adjust one seam. The sleeves took more work, but I finally figured them out. It's very comfortable. The next dress will be made of a slightly stretchier fabric, so I might make it a little more fitted. This one is closely fitted but not tight at all, just how I like it. But I still feel like it makes me look lumpy.

The draping was the hardest part, since I don't have a dress form and just had to put it on myself and then pin it to figure it out. I think that for the next dress, I might skip out on the buttons. I will also try to cut out the front draping part on the bias if I have enough fabric for the next dress.

I like this shape on me. I normally go for A-line dresses and I think this is much more flattering.