Asospiration!

So everyone I know is buying from asos, from my boyfriend, to his little sister. It's affordable, trendy and has free shipping. Well during one of my many perusals I found THIS dress by 'Boutique by Jaeger'. 

So whilst looking for nice, cheap dresses I naturally gravitate to the $300 one that's not on sale. Of course. Even though it looked something way beyond my skills as a seamstress my desire to have this dress motivated me to give it a go. 

Without a pattern it's hard to gauge just from looking at a 2D image of a dress where to actually start, but I just broke it down into components that were familiar to me. It also helps to get as many angles of the dress as you can so you can really see how it's put together.

The bottom was just a pleated skirt. Easy enough. The top took two attempts with my first go failing due my own laziness with wanting to just have one layer of the blue sewn together with the white. Doing it this way allowed no room for error and the whole thing ended up looking really skewed. I really needed to make the two blue parts separately, which would then sit on the white top. Then it was just the front panel and back straps. I made my own buttons using a simple button kit. 

Whilst experimenting it was really important to press all the folds down neatly and pin it all  afterwards to make sure all the components will sit nicely and prevent future grief of having to unpick seams and re-do it later. 

My biggest tip is to have patience and only attempt to do small bits at a time so you never feel rushed. It helps to have lots of extra fabric so if you make a mistake you can learn from it and start again. So with further ado, here's the final product.