Made this dress (heavily inspired by the Anais Dress by Mille) to wear to my daughter's baptism. This dress formula — solid color, dramatic silhouette, easy fabric — has been to be extremely versatile for me (similar to this dress), so am glad to have another option in this category.

I used my M7947 as a very loose reference, mostly for the square neckline width.

The inspiration dress doesn't have darts, but I added them to make fitting easier.

I think the inspiration dress does have a waist seam. I chose to try and avoid a waist seam because It bothers me sometimes to have a waist seam visible if the waist tie gets out of place. Small Detail!

Added 8 total godets around the skirt, starting just below my bum. One godet was added to each side seam, and the remaining six were evenly spaced on the front and back skirt, inserted into a slash. This YouTube tutorial is essentially the process I followed for those six.

A similar full skirt look could also be achieved by just doing a circle skirt, but I think the godets add some visual interest as well as potentially being a little fabric saving?

Used "Patternmaking for Fashion Design" by Helen Joseph Armstrong for how to make this type of sleeve. For this exaggerated of a sleeve, I had to inflate the actual numbers they give, but the slash and spread scheme was the same.

Cut elastic the length I wanted the shoulder strap to be, and cut the casing longer so I could easily pull the sleeve on/off (nursing access!). Had to gather the sleeve cap to the casing, then even more gathered effect was added to the sleeve with the elastic.

Finished the neckline with a facing of a few inches for a clean finish. Next time I'd maybe try a longer facing that would get sewn into the armhole to help keep it a little more secure.

Nearly always add these now!