The Red Dress

It all started with my sister.  Last fall, she went shopping for fabric and patterns to make her Christmas dress.  And she came home with this.

She had two red satins - one solid and one with glitter.  For the pattern, she wanted to use the picture on the far right.
She was going to make the dress herself.  She even got the pattern cut out and the fabric laid out.  But, she is very busy with college and, she likes the idea of hand-crafted dresses more than she likes the reality of sewing them, so her early work never came to fruition.
A few weeks ago, a little birdie told me that my sister still wanted the dress - for Valentine's Day.  So this weekend, I made it up for her.  Here is the finished result:

Since she is tall, I lengthened the skirt six inches.  I also had to lengthen the bodice about an inch and a half - it looked to short on the pattern and I was right in my guess.

Here you can see a little more of the bodice.  Although all the gathering was tedious, the overall pattern was very easy.  I ran a full day of basketball games for the league I direct, then came home and finished this dress before midnight.  And my sister was very thrilled with the end result!