A Dress in an Evening?

I spent the evening at Miss R's house (she is the Costume mistress for the fall musical), doing a bit of sewing for the musical, which The Actor is not in. But, well, they need help. And if I help the muscial parents...maybe they'll help the drama parents when we do MacBeth next spring.

Anyway, she had some patterns that needed to be morphed together to make a 50's looking dress, and after we talked and discussed what we needed to do I took the bodice from Simplicity 3673, the midriff from McCall's 5319, drafted a half-circle skirt that was about twice the width of the waistline so it could be gathered to the bottom of the midriff, cut it all out of some expendable polished cotton and basted it all together on her sewing machine.

It's a 14...the size I could make without tracing/cutting the pattern...and there are a couple of girls that it will possibly fit. Miss R's daughter, who will not be wearing a dress from this design, was close enough in size that she could put it on for evaluation (wish I'd thought to take my camera!). We all decided it was pretty cute and would work for the purpose. Miss R will take it to school tomorrow and see what the director thinks of the shape; the skirt is not as full as the concept picture showed, but to get a full circle would use tons of fabric. TONS.

There are 17 girls who will be wearing dresses from this design. So, yeah, a half circle will mean a huge savings over a circle.

Haven't done any sewing yet for the drama one-act, but I've logged in three hours for the musical. ;)