Little Black Christmas Dress

Happy Christmas - even though black is so hard to photograph!

I unintentionally made a little black dress for Christmas! Well, because it wasn't really made FOR Christmas as much as AT Christmas. And then I wore it to our holiday dinner.

I have been feeling that I needed a basic black dress that could be dressed up or down for work or events for a while. A few weeks ago I was rummaging through my stash and found quite a lot of a lightweight black matelasse knit that I'd completely forgotten I had.

a bit fuzzy but an attempt to show you the texture of the fabric, at the yoke seam

And in addition, someone had asked on PatternReview if I'd ever made my TNT t-shirt pattern (KwikSew 3559) in dress format as it was originally designed to be made. Nope, I wasn't sure a dress would suit my figure. But when I saw this fabric I thought it would be a perfect match. So I tried it.

Wow! This dress is fabulous! It has no waistline, but neither does it hang like a sack. It's fitted but not too much so. I *love* it. The only flaw is that I didn't add side seam pockets as I wasn't sure about this fabric being able to support them, so I'm going to add on some patch pockets instead, now that I know I love this in dress format.

You can really see my glittery tights in this picture!

If I use a slightly heavier knit with a bit more body next time I'll probably add the side seam pockets. There always have to be pockets in order for me to really like a dress ;)

I'm glad I tried out my favourite pattern in dress length. The only change I made was the same one I make when using this as a tee -- I cut the neckline at medium and grade to large between the waist and hip line. I did the same for the dress but followed the large all the way down and didn't flare any extra at the bottom. It turns out that this is exactly the basic dress I was looking for. Hurrah for TNT patterns!