Maggiesville

This is a sneak peak at the dress I'm making for Kathy's baby-to-be. The fabric is recycled from a linen pencil skirt I bought at Goodwill that never quite worked out. I plan to make the same dress for Maggie in a winter weight fabric. Graham was already sweet enough to cut the pieces for me from a tweedy brown skirt, handed down from Anne.

To make, I modified a Simplicity pattern (3509) by omitting the cap sleeves, doing a center pleat rather than gathering, and running buttons down the back instead of a zipper. When cutting the pieces, I decided to remove two inches of width from both the front and back panels and, fortunately, this worked out to be just the right amount of fabric for the pleat and button plackets. The final step will be sewing in the buttons and for some reason this is giving me fits. One of the button holes has turned out to be an irreversible catastrophe.