The back pattern piece is the only one that remained unaltered, although I did cut it out as one piece instead of two and lengthened it about four inches at the line marked for short/long versions of the dress. (With the cape attached around the neckline, having the zipper in the back wouldn’t work unless I split the cape down the middle.) Later on I also altered the width of the shoulders to match those of the width of the new front piece.

For the front pieces, I traced out the pattern’s front piece as it was onto brown paper, pinned the darts together, then pinned it to Margaret, my dress form. Then I traced out the new, lower neckline and the upside-down “V.” When cut out and flattened, that became the top front pattern piece. (Note: the front facing piece called for in the pattern needs to be cut to the same shape as this one.)

The bottom front pattern piece was mostly guesswork. When I traced my cut out brown paper pattern onto scrap fabric to see how the pieces worked in fabric, I had forgotten to take out extra space created by the darts, and so ended up with a bottom front panel much wider than it needed to be. After trimming and pinning and trimming some more, I ended up with a bottom front panel that worked.

The two front pieces were sewn together with the center front edge of the rectangle of cape fabric sandwiched in between. This was not fun, because of the way the two pieces curve.

After I had a front half of the dress, I followed the rest of the pattern directions where I could, stopping before the “sewing up the sides” step. To hold the cape in place, I tucked the material around the neckline and machine sewed it down through all six of the layers (two facings, the front and back, and then two of the cape). Tissue paper helped the fabric feed through smoothly. There are some tucks in the back, instead of the material flowing smoothly, to fix a little cutting mistake I made (a little to hasty with the scissors).

Going back to the pattern directions, I sewed up the left side. On the right side I inserted an invisible zipper, following directions I found online. Using Margaret’s help, I marked the hemline and hand hemmed it.

To finish up the cape, I trimmed away fabric at the two front corners of the rectangle so that they curved nicely as the material fell down to the floor, and evened up the bottom edge. A hand rolled hem with invisible thread finished it off.

My biggest mistake with this dress was not making the entire dress part up as a muslin first, instead of just making a muslin of the front of the dress. I used the smallest pattern size because of fit ease, and so the armholes are a little too close for comfort. Also, I don’t think that the “V” comes far enough down on the sides and the front panel hangs slightly funny from the center (I think there’s too much material through that section). Making a muslin first would have corrected these problems.

I'd also hem the cape neckline edge first, then hand stitch it to the facings on the inside so it would have a smooth look, not that seam around the neck. I'd also use a very very light material (and one that doesn't fray as easily) for the cape. This gets quite heavy, because of the amount of it, and it pulls the neckline in the back down and out slightly.