Pattern Mix and Match - The Penny Skater

How many of you guys are addicted to ModCloth like I am? That site is like crack and I'm lurking there at noon every day for my new hit.  "Inspiration, give me inspiration....and shoes."  Good thing for my wallet that I pin all the dresses to my board and only occasionally buy shoes. Occasionally I swear!

Last summer I pinned this dress.  Not too exciting, but I liked that it was made in a knit fabric and the use of stripes. Thumbs up for stripes!

I never got around to converting some random woven princess line bodice before warm weather ended.  As luck would have it Amanda drafted up her own princess line dress, the Penny Pinafore, during the winter. Hooray, now mocking up this dress would be as easy as pie.

As you can see my version doesn't bother mimicking the neckline and sleeves of the source dress. Instead I embraced the casualness of neck/sleeve bands and made no changes to those areas.  Part of this was laziness, but I also think the dark bands provide a resting place for the eyes after starting at all those stripes. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I didn't have any stashed striped fabric with enough yardage, so I bought some Lillestoff blue/white striped jersey from my twitter pal Melanie. Her Etsy store is here if you're interested and she does still have this fabric in stock. It's virtually impossible to stripe match across the princess line seams so we're calling it a "design element." Otherwise you wouldn't know the seam lines were there....yeah that's it. (My lobster Fredrick agrees.)

The Penny bodice is then paired with the Lady Skater skirt.  I put a seam allowance on the CF/CB line so that a pretty chevron effect can be achieved. Now there's some decent strip matching.

The silhouette is pretty much the same as the Lady Skater, but the stripes make it interesting.  And who doesn't want a few striped knit dresses to add to the wardrobe? If you do than here's how..... (Spoiler - its super simple.)

Quick How To
1. The match point notches are a great guide line for turning the Penny Skater into a bodice.  I laid the CF pattern piece against my body to get an estimate on where my waist falls on the dress.  I found it was 2" below the match point line.  I then traced each pattern piece down to 2" below the match point lines and squared off the bottom of the pattern.

 2. The Lady Skater skirt gets a seam allowance added to the CF/CB line. Then you cut the skirt in 4 pieces and seam the CF/CB at a chevron.

3. I sewed the Penny skater bodice together normally, except that top stitching was added to the princess line seams. The Penny bodice and Skater skirt are then attached as directed in the Skater directions.

Add Luxulite Lobster brooch and make kissy faces at it while pretending to be on a boat. OK, that's just me.  Novelty brooches forevera!