Pleated Dress!

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone has a wonderful time today visiting with family and eating as much as possible.

I made a dress this week that I am really proud of! It's more of a spring/summer dress since it's sleeveless but I suppose I can wait until then.  I have never done pleats before and so I attempted them with this dress. I'm not sure I did it the way the professionals would do it but they turned out how I wanted them to and they weren't too difficult so no complaints here. 

I started by wrapping the material around my waste 1 1/2 times, this was the width I used. I determined the length by measuring how long I wanted the dress and adding an inch to that number. I then sewed up the sides of the material, creating a tube. The photo below shows how I made my pleats. I evenly spaced them and then sewed about two inches down on each one, backstitching at the end.  This picture is of the back side of the material all pinned up before I started sewing.

Once I was done sewing I flipped the piece inside out and this is what it looked like finished.

The picture below shows the top portion of the dress. I traced a top that I already had and kept it simple. I added a zipper to the middle of the back that went down the middle on both pieces. In order to do this you will want to make sure the seam of your skirt portion (the seam you used to make the tube) lines up directly with the seam of your top portion) Once you've sewn the two pieces together you'll add your zipper to the back of the dress. I also added some white edging around the sleeves, some extra material around the color and a green ribbon around the center.

The material I used (isn't it gorgeous!!) is from my sponsor Skye Reeve Fabrics and I loved it. Not only is it gorgeous but it has a bit of a stretch to it as well, definitely a wonderful quality. 

What do you guys think?