This weekend was beautiful in sunny Minneapolis, with our recent cold snap breaking and a heat wave (ok, it was 75 at the most yesterday!) coming in just in time for a friend’s wedding at the most gorgeous spot in the universe, Camrose Hill Farm! I rushed through sewing up my outfit for the evening – Vogue 8648, a funky vintage vibe dress with a pencil or full circle skirt option.

[I’m wearing a pencily, sheathy dress!]

One of the most exciting parts of this project is that I decided at the last minute to muslin the dress in the pencil skirt view, to see what I thought of that. I’ve never liked the pencil skirt look on me, as the RTW skirts and dresses I’ve tried on either have the stuffed sausage look going on (not a good thing, not at all) or they are much too big in the waist and extremely wide through the hem area, which is a pretty frumpy look.

After making the muslin, I decided the pencil skirt look was working and went with this view. As a result, I have nearly two yards of the fabric – a greenish-blue wool crepe – left (60″ width!) that can be used for another project!! Since I’m job hunting now, I’ll hold on to it for a bit – I’d love a skirt in this color, but if I head back to office-land, I would be nice to have a little matching jacket to go with the dress.

Part of the reason I like this dress is that there are princess seams all the way to the hemline. Even though I added a lot of width to the hip area, I also pegged the skirt quite a bit. I started at the hipline and removed about one inch from the front and back princess seams and between two and three inches on the side seams.

[pegged skirt]

I loved wearing this dress! It felt comfy, although it was pretty short when I sat down, which was a little awkward! I installed a back vent instead of the slit that the pattern instructions had. I followed the Cupcake Goddess’s tutorial and it went great, except I had some problems with my lining and fashion fabric not lining up very well.

So for the pictures! Here are the front, back and side views…