It's My Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me!!
And I made myself a dress for my birthday.

I couldn't help it.  I saw this dress that came through my feed on Pinterest and I totally fell in love with it. After reading the original blog few times via Google tanslation, I still couldn't track down the pattern. I decided to make one by drafting the pattern myself.  It was disastrous, the strap kept sliding off the shoulder and they looked like bat wings.  I turned the dress into a funky looking tank top by adding skinny straps to it.

On the second try, I narrowed the shoulder straps from 8" to 7" wide, and modified the bodice on the back to a much taller bodice.  As I was pinning the pieces and trying them on, I realized one of the important factor to improve the look of shoulder straps was making the gathering tighter into narrower width where they're attached to the bodice.  One thing I decided from the start was too low of a neckline at the front.  Low necklines always makes me nervous.

The fabric was a linen blend that I had in my fabric collection for coupla years.  I love it!  It's heavy enough that lining is not needed, yet it's still light and comfortable.  It's fairly close to what I wanted, albeit it can look a bit like maternity dress.  But it's perfect for hot summer.

I think I may try to make another one,

Eventually with a bit sleuthing on the internet, I was able to track down the original pattern from seeing other dresses of the same design on Pinterest.  It's from a Japanese pattern book - Stylish Dress Book: Wear With Freedom, by Yoshiko Tsukiori.   The pattern apparently had been made and blogged by many French bloggers few years back with some modification posted in their blogs. Google translation is a funny thing though it generally gets the idea across. I learned that Google translates French word pattern into "boss" in English.  It kinda makes sense, when you're essentially following orders/instructions :))