My First Dress from a Pattern

I finally did it. I seriously HATE patterns. They're so confusing and the directions are SO bad. I was at Jo Ann's last week and saw they were having 5 for $5 sales on patterns. I looked at the patterns that were on sale and they were Simplicity ones. I decided "why not?" I found 5 great patterns that would usually be around $18 each.  

I have plans for most of these. 

  I found some fabric in the sale section and knew it was perfect for this dress!

I did hit a few snags when making this. I measured myself and it looked like I'd be a size 12 pattern size. NO. I'm not. I was totally swimming in the dress. I had to take it in a bunch and it still doesn't fit that well since it's pretty big. And I put the skirt on wrong so I had to totally take it off and re do it. It was supposed to be gathered but the gathering was just not good so I went for pleated. I warn the dress doens't look great in the below pictures and neither do I!

 I put in my first invisible zipper too!

It's a bit wrinkled from being worn all day. I paired it with a navy blue sweater and it looked really good. It does have pockets though which is great!

 The back and bodice normally lay flat but not for the pictures I guess.

The top was quite complicated and pretty big.

So know that this one was a success, I'm ready to conquer the others.... including the knit dress. *shutter* I'll just have to face my fears with sewing with knits! First I have to find some cute knit fabric, though.