Anyway, dress #1 --- the red dotted rayon faille sundress made with Simplicity 2638 turned out pretty well. However, since I'm not totally comfortable baring my arms in public, it's a good thing that it goes nicely with my lightweight tencel denim jacket.
Here's the dress sans jacket, albeit a bit creased (I confess that I plucked it out of the laundry basket for this photo op without giving it a touch up with the iron):
Not too crazy about this zipper plus keyhole opening with button closure. It seems unnecessarily fussy to me and I'd opt for a zipper alone next time I use this pattern. This dress turned out a bit large, in spite of a well-fitting muslin, so I ended up doing some post-construction alteration to improve the fit.
Dress #2 was a complete success and is super-duper comfy too. I used a cheery green and ivory ITY knit from fabric.com in combination with McCall's 9574. Per the instructions, I basted the back seam and tried it on to see if I could skip the zipper. Since the knit was nice and elastic, I was able to easily slip it on and off without adding the zip (yay!). This dress fits me really really well and the hubs is quite taken with it :D. My only dissatisfaction with this pattern is how the waistband insert is only on the front of the dress, the back is plain and seems a smidgen unfinished/unstructured as a result. When I make this pattern again, I may try continuing the waist inset completely around the dress --- seems as if that would be an easy tweak.
Onward to dress #3!
