A little bit of sewing

Like English weather (as discussed by Melissa here), Dutch weather is unreliable at the best of times, and often wet. Sometimes, we get weeks of warm weather in summer but in other years, "summer" happens on a Tuesday in early May...
There have been a couple of warm days so far, but on Saturday, the weather suddenly turned seriously summer-y. 
I realised it when I was at the market in the morning, to buy fruit. So, when I found this fine, loosely woven cotton on sale for 1 euro a meter, I couldn't resist and bought 3 meters. Even though I really don't need more fabric.

On Sunday, I had some time for sewing and decided it was time for a very summer-y project: a dress in that new fabric.

I wanted to make good use of the stripes and keep it simple at the same time, so I started drafting this:

Drafting it was easy enough but then, I hit a snag: Somehow, in the picture in my head, the stripes in the bodice had always been vertical, turning to a nice chevron at those center front darts. Just trying to put my pattern piece onto the fabric taught me that was an impossibility. But figuring that out took me way longer than in should have. I even went online to look at striped dresses on other blogs to see how they had solved the issue. 
In the end, I had to submit to reality. I wanted the chevron at center front, so the stripes in the rest of the bodice would have to be horizontal. 

I cut the bodice and carefully sewed the darts. Because this is a very light coloured fabric for me and because I worried a little bit about how those red stripes might make it look pink from a distance (and not a nice bright dark pink like my skirt, but a rather cute-sy variety), I used cotton thread so I can dye it later. I bought good Gutermann cotton thread for the purpose but my sewing machine wasn't a fan anyway. It kept skipping stitches... blegh.... 

Now, the dress still needs a neckline finish (which will be a facing, to best show off that stripe effect) a side zipper and a hem. I think I may have time for it on Thursday.
Anyway, I'll show it to you as soon as it's finished.