Pattern Magic, revisited

This is my second attempt at this pattern; the design from page 10 of Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi; my first was here.  I loved the design, but unfortunately that first dress was kinda disastrous.  Firstly, I didn't love the fabric I had used, which was a super-cheapy thick-ish polyester selected for its colour only from the remnants table.  On top of the doubtful quality of the fabric and the fact that it didn't drape very well, my finishing off of that dress was of equally doubtful quality...  I didn't have enough of the blue to cut facings, and used instead a tobacco coloured fabric, a too-thin and also-nasty scrap of polyester.  And I didn't fit the dress properly to myself, and allowed too much seam allowance around the armscye, but sewed a normal width seam allowance, resulting that the dress dug into my armpits in a painful and irritating way, and to unpick the stitching plus understitching around the armscye just seemed all too difficult, since I had sewn them up scrupulously well, and combined with the nasty fabric quality... (deep breath)  I guess in hindsight I was treating the dress like a muslin, which is how it turned out as I wore it precisely two times.  I know, I'm embarrassed by my wastefulness, too...  I can only hope that someone at the Salvos with smaller arms than me saw something good in that thing...
Enough with the saga of sewing failure...
The good news is that I still loved the design enough to really want to have a go at a better one, using nice fabric.  Et voila!


side views (one is more interesting than the other...)

Details:
Dress; drafted from the Japanese pattern book Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi, in slightly nubbly, charcoal-marle polyester/wool suiting
Petticoat; (honestly can't really remember the pattern I used for this), black satin, another picture here
Top and tights; Metalicus
Boots; Andrea and Joen, from Uggies in Dunsborough


back view

Dressmaking details:
There is only one front piece and one back piece, but the shape of the pieces is such that the bodice area is on-grain, but the skirt section is on the bias.  Resulting in that lovely ripply drape. 
This time I carefully measured the bodice area, armscye and the hip area against an old favourite Burda 8511; and made the necessary fitting adjustments to the armscye.  The fabric is a rather nice thin and very drape-y, but still a bit nubbly wool/polyester mix suiting fabric in charcoal marle.  For the cord casing around the "hole" I made bias tape from the same fabric.  The cord is a 120cm brown/black bootlace.
I cut the facing pieces from the same fabric so that the fabric selvedge edge forms the lower edge of the facing.  These pieces are not interfaced; I think the fact they are cut on the cross-grain, while the bodice is on-grain will provide enough stability to this area, and I love the softness of the finished bodice.  The neckline and armscyes are under-stitched and not topstitched.  The other raw edges inside the dress are overlocked to finish, and the hem is hand-stitched.