Black & White Maternity Dress

I'm currently expecting my first child in January of 2016. I have just begun to outgrow my regular clothes and it's frustrating to not have much to wear. Luckily, I really like sewing so I was able to turn it into a fun challenge to design a dress that I can hopefully wear through the rest of my pregnancy. I've never tried to design something with a lot of size flexibility so I looked at a bunch of maternity sewing patterns from the 1950's and '60s for inspiration and ended up with this design.

I started with a basic tent shape sloper for the body of the dress to give it a lot of extra room. To make it adjustable, I added the ties on the sides that can let out more fabric as needed. All the buttons on the front panel work, so that if I really underestimated how large I'll be getting, I can make an even wider panel to replace it. I included some practical side seam pockets too. The black and white color scheme is intentionally plain so that I can accent it with different shirts and tights underneath as the weather gets colder.