A few days back Cabbage Babble linked to this dress.  I decided to try my hand at making one for myself.  I have some silvery black lightweight denim what would be perfect.  Today I patterned the dress out and made a muslin with some burgundy twill I had in my stash fabrics:

Clearly it has some fit issues, which is why we make muslins, right?  I made on-seam pockets instead of the small patch  pockets the original had and I am very happy with those.  The shirring will need to go higher up the back and I’ll space the rows farther apart the next time around.  Also I’ll curve the back seam a bit so the neck doesn’t gap.  The bust darts need to be reshaped as well.  The original dress had bias tape trim on the armholes and the neck, and I interfaced the dress instead.  Partly because I didn’t have enough of the fabric to make tape (it’s interfaced in a darker, solid purple twill)  and partly because interfacing is easier for me.

Over all I’m pretty happy with it.  I think this is a wearable muslin, which is exciting given the amount of work it took.  Seriously, everything takes twice as long as I think it will.  When will I learn to double the time it will take from get go?  On the other hand, it did only take about 5 hours and that was with having to rethread the serger 27 times (each time taking about 5+ minutes).