A Sunday Adventure in a New Dress

What more could I say about the Simplicity 2444?  It is one of my favorite patterns, and I think I have made this one more than enough times that you all would get tired of hearing about it once again.  So instead, this post is about the day I wore my newest me-made dress, which I will probably refer to as my very own Map Dress. (I couldn’t think of anything else… And every time I do try and think of a name, I can’t help but get that map song from Dora the Explorer in my head: I’m the map!)

I made it as intended only with a little bit of an extra personal touch: an exposed metal zipper a la Trish Stitched style.  She was my inspiration for this dress, and I am more than happy to give credit where credit is due.  (And I will say her version, which was made from a Simplicity 1873, definitely blows my version out of the water.)

The day at hand was a wonderful Sunday afternoon.  My guy and I had plans to make the trek to Middle Tennessee to visit a winery we had yet to try.  The boy grudgingly tagged along – really, he had no choice.  We left early enough to get in a nice sized lunch at the Cheese Cake Factory before heading down the road from the Cool springs Galleria to the Arrington Vineyards.

It was about mid-afternoon at this point, and we were expecting to be the early ones arriving at the winery – we were wrong.  The event of the day was from 2-6 and even arriving just a bit after 2, we found we were not the only ones who had the idea to spend a Sunday afternoon sipping on wine and listening to local music.  The tasting line was already at a 45 minute wait.

We moseyed on down to the barn section of the winery, where local bluegrass music was playing, and put our names down on the thirty minute list for wine tasting this side of the vineyard.  It didn’t take near as long as we anticipated, and before we knew it, we had found our selection for the day.

We bought ourselves a bottle and headed for a shadier location where we might sip on our newly purchased bottle of wine and eat cheesecake that we had so cleverly decided to bring from the restaurant.

It was a wonderful day!  My boy may beg to differ, but after it was all said and done, I think he had a nice time.  How can a day not be that good when cheesecake is involved?  Oh, and a new dress, plus wine.

Extra details:  Fabric is from Tim Holtz’s Eclectic Elements collection, and I used this tutorial from Professor Pincushion to figure out how to put in the exposed zipper.  It was maybe the easiest zipper I had ever done – got it on the first try!

*Linking up with: Top of the World Style, Craftastic Monday, Creative Mondays, Tuesday’s With a Twist, Sydney Fashion Hunter