new fabrics, and the next dress

Having completed the gathered black-and-white print dress yesterday, I happily chose the next dress pattern I'm going to make out of my first stash of 13 patterns that I bought a few weeks ago. Here's the lucky winner:

Retro Butterick B4790

It's such a unique dress :-) and evidently an extremely popular pattern. I rather liked the uni-colored version better than the bi-colored one (especially after looking through finished projects).

Here's my favorite finished project (why didn't I get a polka-dot fabric...??):

glasseswearer

I like the neat result she got. The fit and the colors are well-balanced (and the picture is pleasant) :-). She hemmed it shorter - at knee length. I might end up doing that as well. We'll see.

So off I went to Nachalat Binyamin street in Tel Aviv to find me some good cotton print fabric for cheap. Mind you this pattern calls for 3.5 to 4 meters of fabric (!) because it has a full circle skirt. I saw a few fabrics I sort-of liked but they didn't feel like they were it... And then I found the perfect fabric:

It wasn't cheap - 28 NIS per meter (about 8 dollars a meter), but reasonably priced and just lovely. I was looking for a print that would work as a dress this long, and would have colors inside it that I could choose for the bias binding all around. I almost settled for a fabric with small blue checks for 15 NIS per meter, but matching up checks is not so much fun and anyway I wasn't too keen on it. Luckily I found out that the checked fabric wasn't 1.5 meters wide and anyway it was medium weight (the pattern calls for a lightweight fabric, which makes a lot of sense) - dilemma solved :-)

---
Remember how I fell in love with this pretty eyelet fabric for this cutie-pie dress?

McCall's 6111

Well I know I shouldn't buy just about any nice fabric I see - I try to buy only fabric I need for now - but I had to make an exception for this lovely fire-ey orange eyelet (only 15 NIS per meter!)...

Am I wrong? Is it not a good shade of orange...?
I don't know... I guess I'll find out soon enough...

I'm not sure I will like it as a dress but I just could not leave it behind! I promise that I saw other fabrics I wanted and didn't get... This was just a small exception...!

So I got 2 meters of it... Had I known the amount I needed for the dress I would have gotten the exact amount (yet another downside of impulse fabric shopping). Who knows, when my pattern arrives, it might just be converted into the dress that inspired it :-D

---
A word about plastic bags. I took a fabric bag with me, so I saved two plastic bags while buying fabric from two different stores. Then I saved another plastic bag when I went for milk at the local grocery store - just picked up a bag I had lying around and used it. It's my modest way to help the environment... These bags just pile up at my house and I think I can easily change that.

---
Before I sign off I'd like to show off my two orchids that I got from my sweet boyfriend... I am proud of myself that they are still alive!!

Here's the one I got for Valentine's Day:

And the one I got for my birthday :-)