Purple Lady Skater

I wanted to make a new knit dress because it's been a while since I've made a new everyday dress, but I was having decision anxiety over what to make and which fabric to use.  So, I made my husband come into my sewing room and pick a fabric for me to use.  He picked this lovely purple cotton lycra knit that has been in my stash long enough for me to not remember where it came from.

I only had 2 yards, so that limited my pattern selection without needing to color block.  I keep my patterns indexed in Evernote, and one of the tags I use is "2 yards or less" to indicate that I can make the pattern with less than 2 yards.  So, when I filtered my pattern list on "dress, pdf, knit, 2 yards or less" I got 14 hits.  Several of them are ones I haven't even made yet, so I need to fix that someday, but right now, I was looking for something I knew I could make in a day.  So, I decided it was time to make my old favorite TNT Lady Skater pattern.

I have had great love for the Kitschy Coo Lady Skater and have not bothered to hide it!  I hadn't made one since I lost weight and I had originally made some changes to the pattern to get a better fit, so I actually thought this might be a good time to find a different pattern for this simple dress silhouette to try out.  But I actually couldn't find another fit and flare knit dress that could be made with less than 2 yards.

So, I reprinted my beloved Lady Skater, which was the first PDF pattern I ever made, and realized how far along PDF patterns have come since that one!  The pattern doesn't have layers, which is fine because at least half the time I forget to go turn off the sizes I'm not cutting anyway.  The pattern has no line distinction for the sizes and only uses different colored solid lines.  I only have a black and white printer these days, so it was very obvious that the pattern isn't great for printing in black and white.  Luckily, the pattern is simple enough that it wasn't actually a problem.  But I did go over the size I wanted to cut out with a highlighter anyway, just to be sure.

My measurements fit squarely into the size 6.  Previously, I made the size 8, which is the biggest size it comes in.  The changes I made to that size 8 were: I took the shoulders in a bit, I raised the waistline by an inch and I did a small swayback adjustment.  I compared the size 6 to the size 8 and the shoulders were not as wide as my adjusted size 8 shoulders and the waistline was the same as my adjusted waist on the size 8.  So, I decided to just make the size 6 once as is and do all the fitting over again.

I added pockets, using the Colette Moneta pocket piece placed 4" from the top of the skirt pieces.  Because, of course all dresses should have pockets!

The fitting changes I want to make to my next version:

• take a bit of width out of the shoulders, because I hate having that little bubble on the top of my shoulder when I lift my arms.  
• sway back adjustment to remove some of those wrinkles on my back
• maybe I need to add a bit of length to the back of the skirt to allow for my bodacious booty. 

Do you have any patterns that are worth starting over with?