Here’s a more true-to-life (or at least, true to the pattern illustration) version of Simplicity 5238:

I actually bought this fabric yonks ago. I bought it in early autumn and thought it was too summery, and then it suffered from a lot of being “too” other stuff, as well. It was too heavy for a regular shirtdress, and then too stripey for some patterns that would have required more matching than my laziness allowed, and then once I started playing with Simplicity 5238, I was all, “hello there, sorry you’ve been languishing in the back of the fabric closet, time to come out and play!”

Even though it is VERY stripey, it’s not too bad to match with this pattern:

The major departure from your bog-standard Simplicity 5238 is the addition of front slash pockets, of course:

I’ve decided, after a few iterations, that center back zippers are horrible. At least, my implementation of this one is:

Center back waist turned out mostly okay. Go figure.

The stripes did something interesting (I’m CALLING it interesting, therefore it is INTERESTING and not ‘off’) on the back bodice:

I’m also telling myself that the V there makes my back waist seem smaller (although honestly, I gave up really trying to optically-illuse my Actual Body™ away ages ago) and also that nobody will notice the weird hiccup at the bottom of the zipper because the pattern is so darn busy.

I ended up calling this the Cinco de Mayo dress because I coincidentally wore it for the first time on Cinco de Mayo,  running errands in the Mission, so I got a  lot of very nice compliments on it from people who were, for the most part, only MILDLY inebriated. I believe this would an excellent dress to attack a piñata in, should you be so inclined — the armholes are very deep, so you should be able to get some good whacks in without worrying about tearing out a sleeve. Also, you’ll match both the tissue paper AND the candy.