Purple Crocheted Dress Vest

After seeing a beautiful dress with an overskirt of embroidered panels, I decided to crochet the panels and used a leaf-vine pattern. When the panel was finished, it seemed too narrow, so I decided to make a border in a darker purple to give it a better width, comparable with the ones I had seen on the dress that inspired me. I had chosen two kinds of purple in crocheted yarn because I happened to have it handy , but after finishing the panels for the skirt and adding the crocheted waist band suddenly realized that I was going to have a difficult task finding just the right color for the underskirt. Then I went to Jo-Ann's fabric store to buy something and saw the sale they had on terrific fabrics. Taking a quick look, I spotted a very dark purple crinkled fabric that looked almost black and realized that it was just perfect as the underskirt, because it would actually accentuate the leaf pattern by showing the dark color in the leaf spaces and giving the perfect contrast to the purple I had used.
Looking at the crinkly fabric I let my eye tell me how to do the dress and realized that I didn't want a skirt sewn onto a blouse, but a one piece dress with no seam at the waistline. This way, i wouldn't have to keep trying to align the overskirt to the other waistine at all and would have less bulge at the waist. I immediately thought of the medievel simple dresses worn underneath the second fancy skirt or dress and I thought of a drawing I had made of such a dress many years ago in my little stenographer's notebook. I had drawn it while looking at a book on medievel costumes my daughter had brought home from the college library.
I found the drawing and soon had it drawn on some white paper I had that had come protecting a clear plastic I had bought to protect my crocheted tablecloth. Using a blouse that fitted me perfect I adjusted my drawing to my size and cut the crinkly fabric, thankful that the fabric was 52 inches wide. I almost didn't get sleeves but put some together from the pieces left over after cutting my dress. I basted it and tried it on and realized I needed to trim it smaller a couple of inches all around. After trimming it I basted it again and since it fitted me well finally sewed it in a back stitch very carefully since my sewing machine doesn't work. The dress is perfect and may be used as a dress by itself or as the basis not only for the purple crocheted dress, but any other overskirt dress I may come up with later. Its dark purple color makes it perfect to be a part or be combined with other outfits or accessories.