Orange bliss

OK, to make a long story short: I love this dress!
Even when I was trying it on half-way through construction, it never failed to cheer me up. I think it has a lot to do with the colour, a super-bright kind of burnt orange. The fabric, a soft mid-weight fine wale corduroy is also rather nice  to wear. And of course, I love the design.

I loved it on the inspiration picture. This was the kind of thing I started using Pinterest for: So I could remember the great finds in the thick tomes of my vintage magazines. It was already described as a practical-yet-elegant dress, made in brightly coloured in corduroy there and in this case, I saw no reason to try and re-invent the wheel. This dress just looked right for me. And when I found this fabric on the sale table at a market stall a few months ago, I knew it was meant to be. 
This was the dress I kept thinking about while I was working on my 1930's dress...

With just the picture to go on, I drafted what I thought the pattern might look like, with a change of collar, because I like mine better (at least, I thought I did. Half-way I started to doubt, as members of We Sew Retro Sew & Tell may know. But I ended up sticking with my go-to large-ish collar and I'm really happy with it).
The bodice and sleeve are the ones I drafted for my flounce dress. They are comfortable and pretty in that dress and rather look like the inspiration dress: a fitted shirtdress with set-in sleeves.

The skirt was based on my new pencil skirt block. It has no side seams except in the hip-pieces under the pocket and width of the darts is in the short seams which attach the pockets. The pocket flaps were cut separately and I applied fusible cotton to the inside halves, to help them stand out proudly. And of course, pleats were added at two centimeters from center front.

I hit a bit of a snag on Friday, when I thought I could finish the dress and found out that the two kinds of orange buttons in my stash were really no match for this fabric. Luckily, I found two good options at the market on Saturday morning. And yesterday, with the dress itself done, I decided that this was the time to use the one 'cover-a-buckle' kit I've been hoarding for years now. These things are not easy to come by here in the Netherlands. I bought this one at a haberdashery stall at the market. The were going out of business and sold all kinds of odds and ends from their warehouse in the last couple of months. They only had three of these kits, in two sizes and I, stupidly, just bought one. I think it was rather old, the design of the package looked 1970's to me...

And this was definitely the right project for it. The dress didn't look right with my usual belts and I love the look with this matching one.
Now, I just think I should look out for more buckle-kits...

P.S. E thought it would be fun to take pictures with the inspiration casually lying around in the foreground. I thought it would be fun to try and copy the picture. We did both but unfortunately all against the light.