Graduation Dress

My favorite projects tend to be dresses sewn for specific events, and this past week I had to put my wardrobe sewing on hold to finish my dress for graduation.

The College of Charleston graduation takes place outside on the Cistern, the most beautiful spot on campus, and the women all wear white dresses and the men white tuxedo jackets instead of caps and gowns.  I was lucky enough to find some plain white seersucker at Hancock Fabrics on sale for about $3.50 a yard, sketched out a design on a post-it note, and sewed my dress up in the two days between moving out of my dorm and driving back to Charleston for graduation rehearsal.

Here’s the dress in action:

And one closer up, flanked by my little brothers (who obligingly wore bow-ties at my request):

Despite the rush to get it finished, I’m pretty happy with the results.

It’s summer time, and the weather is fine

In honor of another beautiful, summery day here in Charleston, I’ll post an earlier project that is quickly becoming my favorite dress.  The pattern is Simplicity 3875, view D, done in rayon challis from Hancock fabrics:

This picture was taken about 5 seconds before I spilled coffee all over the front.  Thank God it’s machine washable.

The neckline turned out a little more revealing than I would have liked, but it looks cute with a tank under it, so I’m not going to mess around with it any more.  I’m thinking of doing another in a nice batik, because it’s a great casual dress, and will work nicely for those hot DC summers. Also, in gauze it would make a great swimsuit cover-up/beach dress.  It also went together really quickly, with a minimum of swearing and sticking myself with needles – probably because there are no buttons or zippers (side note:  twice now, I’ve managed to sew through my own finger when applying a zipper.  I’m still not sure exactly how it happened, but suffice it to say, I was in a great deal of pain.  Good thing I believe in suffering for art).

Incidentally, I’m going to use the same pattern for my Capitalist Pig stunt dress.

Red circle skirt: Completed

This one actually only took about 4 hours from start to finish, which makes it a great project to run through on a busy weekend.  The picture can’t really do it justice, because the skirt looks much better when twirling, but here it is:

You also can’t tell from the picture, but it has tiny red pin dots, and pockets set into the side seams.  So, it scores high in both practicality and twirlyness.  Which are my two criteria for clothes at this point, so I’m satisfied.

Now, if I could only find someone to go swing dancing with me on Saturday…

Now I want to go swing dancing

I was up until 1:30 AM sewing on the last buttons, but I’m finally done with my navy blue polka dot shirtwaist dress:

The lighting is bad, and the mess behind it is worse, but the dress turned out really well.  I improvised the skirt, which is not quite a full circle, and the button placket on the front of the skirt, which was loosely based on this beautiful dress.  It also has pockets set into the side seams of the skirt (how’s that for alliteration?) for the practicality of not having to carry a purse everywhere.

I’ve already bought the fabric for my next gazillion projects, including four dresses (one novelty that doesn’t really count), three skirts and two blouses.  I’ve maxed out my desire to do complicated things like lining up buttonholes, so I’ll probably stick with a fairly simple skirt for my next project.

Nautical Style

When fashion magazines talk about how big nautical style is going to be this summer, as they do every March, they usually mean those awful white pants with buttons on the front, or the uninspired striped canvas bag with rope handles. I believe in a slightly more literal interpretation. Which is why I have designs on this fabric:

The picture is blurry because I kept toying with the size, but if you click on it, it’ll take you to a better picture (the magic of the Internet at work). For reference, those boats are about 2 inches tall – subtle it is not. I think a whole dress might be a little over the top, but a full skirt with a white sweater would be really cute. Much cuter than stupid sailor pants, anyway. Of course, I have three other fabrics to be sewn into skirts before I’ll allow myself to buy this one. We’ll see how long that resolution lasts.

Spring/Summer Project: Navy Shirtwaist Dress

As part of my goal to make sewing a wardrobe-building activity (especially with real world work looming), I planned out a color palette and list of items to sew this spring and summer. I’m using red, navy, white and some yellow. I’m all about the 1950’s full skirt/fitted waist look, so my first serious project is a navy blue and white polka dot shirtwaist dress that I’m Frankensteining out of a McCall’s button front blouse (M5138 ) and a skirt I drafted myself.

Behold, my duct-tape dress form Doris in the bodice section:

The collar didn’t go in very neatly, but I didn’t have the patience to screw around with it so I’m leaving it as it is. I also don’t like the way the facings are done in the pattern, so I probably wouldn’t sew with it again.

I’m putting a waistband between the skirt and the bodice for some definition, and I had already sewn in it when I realized that although the fit through the bust and ribcage was great, the bodice flared weirdly over the lower part of my waist. So now I have to take it out and fiddle with it a little.