Dressing Up

I love to dress up.  I don’t have many chances to do it though.  I guess I should just make my own reasons.  Such as wearing a formal dress to the movies. 

I mentioned before that I keep buying blue fabric… well looking at the dresses in this post it just cements that.

This is one of my favorite dresses.  It came from a vintage pattern that I found while working in the costume shop. 

I absolutely love the 1950s/1960s.  And this dress fits so perfectly into that style.  I feel like I’m straight out of Mad Men when I’m wearing this dress.  All I need is a martini, a trophy husband (I’m still holding out for Jon Hamm… ), and some of that great 1960s cooking… ok maybe I could do without the cuisine of that era…

Here was my attempt at a little black dress.  All of the dresses I make are in bold colors and patterns, not too much is just a simple dress. 

This dress was a headache from the beginning.  The pattern was not done very well.  The dress should have been knee length and it ended up more like thigh length.  I’ve worn this with tights before, but it keeps riding up so it doesn’t get out of the closet too much.  The top also had a lining that made no sense.  The fabric is stretch, but the lining wasn’t supposed to be.  So the top couldn’t stretch at all and it was too small for the rest of the dress.  I ended up just cutting out the lining and that helped the fit a lot.  I just wish it was longer… Maybe I’ll have to pick up some additional fabric one day and add a strip to the bottom of it.

I love this pattern, but have had some trouble with it too.  I first made this dress for my high school graduation.  The dress was white, since our robes were white.  But the top of it was too tight to wear every day. 

When I made this version of the dress I made sure to make the top extra big.  This helped a bit, but the slit down the front is really low.  I had it sewn together for a while, but the fabric started to tear under the stress.  I now just have it open and have to wear a camisole whenever I wear it out.

It seems as I’m writing this that any formal dresses I make have problems.  But I guess that is kind of the way it is when you are buying dresses too.  You have to try on hundreds of them before you can find something that fits.  I just have to alter mine until it fits. 

For this dress I used the same pattern that I often use for sundresses.

I hate working with silk fabric since it shows everything.  Every wrinkle, every seam, every mistake.  This dress ended up being too loose in the waist and under the chest.  I had to add in a few darts, but the fabric puckers a little at the waist.  It has a thin belt to go with it that sort of covers it, but I like to wear a thicker black belt with it to just hide all the seams there.