"Coffee Date" Dress (A Frock by Friday)

Funny considering my last post was about my first date at a coffee place and this project I'm working on is called "Coffee Date!"

This week I am participating in the "Frock by Friday" challenge/group project on my favorite sewing website, Grosgrain! I have never made a dress before, but have really been wanting to for quite a few months now- made a really bad attempt a few months back- it did not go over so well. (That may be what happens when you just make it up as you go along. lol)

This time, I am following along with a new post every day this week with instructions from Grosgrain, and I downloaded the pattern for free as a pdf from Bruda Style. I had to print out the pattern, tape it all together and then cut it out, but it was just fine! I barely screwed that part up at all!

What's great about this, is that Grosgrain is doing this to help us less advanced, or beginner, or first time sewers how to put a dress together. We're all working on the same pattern and can leave comments each day when we get confused or stuck on a step. I feel like it's just as good as a sewing class so far and I am pretty proud of myself!

I have the skirt pieced together, but I just wanted to take a picture of the top so far. What do you think?

The pattern we are working off of was a free download, which was great. Bummer is, it is a pattern designed just by some random person- they made the pattern themself, which is totally awesome, but there were a couple of (easy to fix) mistakes. The problem I am having is that the top is way too small. Now, the lady who writes Grosgrain had the exact same problem and she is teeny-tiny- but she's breastfeeding, and commented that she is bustier than usual. Well, I am bustier than the average gal, and I think that's the problem. Because of my bust, it's making the top really short. So I left a comment on Grosgrain to ask her for advice on what I should do. It barely makes it over my chest. I really don't want it to look like am empire waisted dress when it's supposed to be a traditional a-line dress! LOL

Also, this pattern is sleeveless, but so many people asked to make sleeves that Grosgrain made or tracked down a sleeve pattern for us, but since this is my first dress at all, and I am just barely making it through as-is AND I have huge arms, I figured I would save that challenge for the next dress. Which I already bought the fabric for. lol The next one is red. I'm going to use the same pattern as a base and then modify it, which I think I will be able to do just fine on my own since I've got something to jump off of. For that one I am going to do 3/4 length sleeves, hopefully a boatneck, and hopefully some cute pleating/ruffles on the bottom. We will see how the rest of this goes!