The other night I was looking into my basket of fabric (yes I have 1 single basket of fabric even if I live 5 minutes away from the New York Garment district) and I looked at this piece of wool blend. I got at Paron NYC last year made a pair of pants with it, folded the leftover and never thought about it again. I realized that I had a yard and a half in 60" wide. I decided right away that the rough texture would be perfect for the dress burda from this month (up for download on burdastyle). I was extra happy when I realized that the pattern was available in size 34, not that many of burda pattern are available in 34 and I have to grade down the patterns that I really like. It's slightly time-consuming and often discouraging...Anyway, I did my usual Burda alterations : "petite" alteration, I'm 5"3 and my bust is short so I remove systematically 1"between the bust line and the waist line, "children arms" alteration, here I took off 2"of the sleeve length, I added 1/2'' on each side of the hip (I don't want to give a name to this one, it's not going to be flattering).I had a friend marking taking the back in before I inserted the zipper and after everything I still decided to add back darts for the extra fabric hanging there...I don't think that the pictures do justice to the dress, it does look better in person and I had tons of compliment at the office. Even my boyfriend said something nice about it (he usually does not even notice).The front gathers and the bias make it super comfortable for a corporate dress and even allows some room in case I have a business lunch (French business lunch can require some extra space...). No inside shot but you can see here that the seams are binded. By the way, I found that using 3/8" or 1/4" seam allowances really helps me for precision and that since I use Fashion Incubator Tutorial on invisible zippers, they are a breeze to insert!!For some reason I can work on patterns and sewing for hours but 15 minutes of taking pictures really makes me cranky...