New Look N6666 halter dress in bright Katie Kortman fabric

I picked up this New Look N666 summer dress pattern in a Spotlight sale when I was home in Perth. Elastic back openings seem to be all the rage right now, and I’m really loving the style and fit of this halter dress. I bought this bright and colourful Katie Kortman heavy cotton from Nerida Hansen earlier this year, and I love how the structure holds the a-line of the skirt. 

This was a pleasantly easy pattern to follow, however, not without adjustments. As usual, I needed to adjust the bust darts but for some reason, I cut out the size 14 (roughly equates to a UK 10) without taking this into account. The bodice piece has a cut out dart, which I think overcomplicates things when you need to make a small bust adjustment, so I re-traced the front bodice without the gaps in the sides and cut it out again. Despite attempting to follow a small bust adjustment YouTube tutorial, I ended up getting the fit right by simply draping the pattern piece over myself and pinning. I did manage to slightly distort the shape of the bodice while retracing - it ended up being slightly too narrow at the bottom and too long over the waist - but since it was too long I was able to trim it back when I attached it to the skirt. 

The bodice construction

The skirt was theoretically easy to make and at this point, I should have been able to complete the remainder of the dress in a few hours. However, it’s always when things look easy that they go wrong. I received my first overlocker as a Christmas gift and it ran out of thread for the first time as I was overlocking one of the skirt side seams. Fast forward to about three hours of swearing at my overlocker as I tried to work out how despite following the threading instructions, one of the threads kept coming out, and I finally sussed it out around 10pm on a Saturday night. 

The back skirt

After getting past my overlocker dramas, the skirt came together quickly. The only adjustment I made was to take in the elastic on the waistband. I had traced the skirt pieces with a New Look size 12 (UK 8) waist and size 14 (UK 10) hips, however, the waist was still loose after attaching the top to the skirt. I’m not sure whether this was an error in my cutting, but my waist measurement definitely isn’t smaller than the New Look 12. 

I’m loving the shape and bright colours of this dress. The back ties are super cute and despite looking fancy, it even has pockets!