Oh purple day, you always seem to be more challenging. Not as challenging as green, mind you, but enough. Maybe it’s because these last two purple projects have been with knits, which aren’t my strength.

It started with this pile of fabric. A friend of mine was cleaning out some things and came across this purple fabric she bought to create her own Moby wrap. The knit is great quality (as evidenced by how well the seams and hems turned out on this project – I’m usually terrible at those), and the shade of purple is lovely – it’s even darker than in these photos.

I didn’t really  have much of a plan, and I didn’t even know how wide the fabric was until I stretched it out on the floor. It was approximately 30 inches wide and 6 yards long. I didn’t want to piece anything together, so I decided to make it a fold-over dress.

Here’s the sketch of the design from my journal for you visual folks:

I cut the fabric at 2 yards. I folded it in half and evened up the width at 28 inches.

I found a t-shirt in my closet whose neckline I liked and used it as a model for the dress neckline. (This didn’t turn out so well, as you will see.) I used a plate to create a smooth curve.

I pinned the side of the dress and sewed them together, leaving 8 inches at the top for sleeves. I pressed open the side seams and pressed down the edges of the sleeves before sewing them. I pressed and sewed the neckline and hemline in a similar fashion.

When I tried it on, the neckline was WAY too big. (Maybe it stretched being a knit? I really have so little experience with this kind of fabric. Maybe I need to do some research before I attempt another knit project). So I just flipped the dress around to have a higher boatneck in the front and lower dip in the back.

I knew the dress would fit loosely – I just figured I’d always wear it with a belt – but I loved the volume of it.

It’s very comfortable and quite flattering.

And it works well with a belt, too. I have lots of fabric left (Thanks, Melissa!), so I think I’ll try to tweak it a bit. I could always use a little more practice.

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This post is part of a 31 day series. Find all the posts in this series here.

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