Sometimes you find a fabric that makes the dress.  As I remember it, the client sent me shopping with something entirely different in mind but I had purchased a 1/4 yard of this fabric to show her because a swatch just was not going to communicate much about the yardage.  We looked at all the swatches together but we both loved this very busy fabric.  Boarder prints are so hard to find and when you do find them they offer such rich possibilities.

We dispensed with some of the bows, but otherwise the dress stays close to the original drawing from Godey's Ladies Book.  You may note that the dress form is listing.  The client relies heavily on a cane so the dress was fit and hemmed to accommodate her walk.

It was really fun to make.  It was like having an infinite range of matching fabrics to work with since the pattern changed as it moved across the yardage.  Depending on where I cut things from I had dramatically different results.  

The first image is the finished dress, second is the drawing from which we worked.