Dress Catch-Up

Okay, so wow, it's been a while since I posted anything here. I've been too busy actually crafting to write about my crafting. Which isn't totally a bad thing. Also, now that I have an Instagram I kind of feel like that's a better platform for sharing my finished objects then this is anyway. The blog is starting to feel sort of redundant.

Anywho. There are three main dresses that I've made since my last update and they kind of naturally feed into each other.

Backstory on the first dress: I got to take a class from my sewing superhero Gertie Hirsch. I went to the Puyallup Sewing Expo in March and took a class on basic bodice alterations. It was awesome. For a half hour class she really packed in a lot of great info about darts and how to alter necklines and shoulders. Plus I got to meet Gertie and she is a total sweetheart. I was so excited I thought I was going to pass out and I was kind of a spaz, but she was cool about it.

So that was awesome. Then I immediately went home and altered the shoulders of her princess seam bodice from Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book and paired it with the pencil skirt for what feels like an utterly decadent silk dress. I did also take in the pencil skirt. I'm much too straight in the hips for most standard pencil skirts. The silk is from Silk Baron, it's a dupioni called black raspberry. I needed a dress to wear to my grandma's memorial dinner, but I didn't want to look to funerial so I think the color was perfect for that. 

Of course I forgot to take any pictures of the dress before dinner, so the lighting is awful in the only picture I do have because it was, like, midnight at this point. 

For a dress on totally the opposite end of the occasion spectrum my next dress was for a baby shower I hosted for a friend. I used the exact same modified princess seam bodice, but I paired it with a 4 yard gathered skirt. The cherry print fabric is from Gertie's fabric line from JoAnn's and it is slinky and cool and a dream to wear, but I'm not going to lie, it's kind of a nightmare to work with. It's slippery and doesn't want to stay on grain. I lined the dress and I've never done a facing and a lining at the same time, but I wish I had on this because the neckline doesn't have enough structure to hold itself up and it actually made the waist line hang funky too. But the print is cute enough that it successfully distracts the eye (until I tell you it's wrong. Oh well).

I hastily knit the little shrug to go with the dress so that no bra straps would make an uninvited appearance. The modified shoulder feels very flattering, but it does cut in just enough that a strapless bra would be better.

I did make an Esplanade Bra (a long line strapless bra) by Orange Lingerie to wear under the silk dress but it's black and the fit needs to be refined a bit. Honestly knitting a shrug was an easier more comfortable and cheaper fix then making another bra. Especially because the yarn I used was out of my stash anyway. 

And the last dress that I made was another gathered skirt. This time I paired it with the v-neck bodice from Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book. I'm very pleased, it fit perfectly with no modification at all.

The last dress was to wear to a car show and I am a total sucker for a themed dress. What can I say, Ms. Frizzle is my fashion hero. And for those of you that aren't 90s kids, that is a Magic School Bus reference. I went to Pacific Fabrics in Bremerton with my mom and we picked out two wonderful fabrics. The bodice is blue with Route 66 images and the skirt is license plates, but each plate has a sewing or quilting reference on it.

The first car is my favorite a '67 Chevy El Camino. The bottom picture is me in front of my second favorite car a '55 Chevy Bel Air. Yes. I am a totally Chevy girl.

The best part about it was that while at the show someone walked up to me to say they loved my dress and that they saw it on Instagram. Then I got featured in Pacific Fabrics weekly newsletter. It's maybe a bit silly, but I was really excited about it.

I took a screen shot of the email. Yep. I'm a dork. It was still a total thrill.

Anyway. That gets me almost kind of sort of caught up. I think I've finished a couple of knitting projects, and I'm gotten a lot done on a cross stitch project. And of course I'm sewing another dress right now. But I will save those for another update. And hopefully it won't take me another three months to get around to it.