A-Line Sheath with Color Blocking

Have you ever been inexplicably excited about an very basic garment or project? Actually, that happens to me all the time.

This little dress resulted from the marriage of a goodly yard of ponte knit left over from the Walk the Dog skirt ($2.40/yard from a recent FabricMart clearance sale) with a find from the Goodwill-by-the-pound bins: a women's long sleeved mock turtleneck top in a heathered orange heavy weight cotton/spandex interlock. The top was brand new with its paper tags attached, and it was size XL. I paid around 50 cents for it. 

Despite its humble sourcing, I gave a lot of thought to what would constitute the highest and best use for my orange knit. It's not easy to find nice heavy cotton-rich knits by the yard, and I also really like the color. I nearly chose to make a skirt from the shirt. What an easy project that would be: cut off the sleeves, reshape the side seams, add an elastic waistband and go. I could have even kept the RTW hem. But there wasn't enough fabric to add much in the way of pockets, and the skirt would have been on the short side. 

Then I realized that the weight of the fabric was similar to my leftover bit of ponte. Since gray is not a flattering color near my face, I decided to position the orange up high and the gray down low. A search for color blocked ponte sheaths on Pinterest provided me with plenty of ideas on different ways the color blocking could work. 

The pattern is another humble resource, New Look 6700, which reeks 1990s but which has been the basis for several recent items: ruffled knit dress, cozy t-shirt dress, white t-shirt, Ivey Abitz-inspired cardigan and an ITY dress not yet photographed.

I tried to bring the orange down into the gray portion of the dress by using orange double needle topstitching at the pockets and hem. Do you think I should take this a little further by adding some orange buttons to the pockets (maybe covered buttons in the orange fabric)?

I bet I'll get lots of use out of this dress this summer: it's very comfortable, it feels covered up and it has a place for a phone.