Ottomon Breton Dress hybrid: Simplicity 1609 and McCalls 6886

A lot of times, I'll have a pattern I want to make, and I'll find a good fabric shopping or in my stash to make it with, and that's that.  Sometimes, though, I'll have a vision in my head of what I want to make - usually just trying to recreate something I've seen - and then I have to find the right fabric AND the right pattern.  These can be kind of hit or miss with whether my results approximate the look I was going for.

This one, though, is a 100% success!

I am sooooo happy with this dress.  I want to wear it every day.  It hits that sweet spot of dressiness and weather flexibility that I can wear it with boots and sweater now:

and I can wear it with a necklace and sandals when summer arrives... you know, next month.  I can wear it to church with some heels or running errands with flats.  It can go anywhere!

I wanted something easy wear, but not shapeless.  I originally thought of McCalls 6886, a very popular basic t-shirt dress pattern, but I wanted to add bust darts.  Then I remembered this pink dress, made from Simplicity 1609, that I made last summer, and how it fit perfectly.  And then I thought, how awesome would it be to pop some pockets in those diagonal seams??  So, I tried on the pink dress to check if the seam placement was good for pockets (it is) and went for it!

I didn't want a sleeveless dress, though, so I meshed together the two patterns to use the sleeves, and armscyes from the McCalls pattern with the neckline and rest of the dress from the Simplicity pattern.  I like how the back darts add some shape to the back that you won't get in a plain t-shirt dress. There are also little darts at the beck neck that you can see in the pic below.  They make sure that the neckline doesn't gape.  Love them!

I was careful to match stripes wherever possible.  My magic method for this is... lots of pins.  Pin at every stripe.

 The fabric is wonderfully beefy!  It is this RPL Ottoman stripe from Gorgeous Fabrics.