Gold dress.

So it's been a while since I blogged. This year has been a bit strange, and I have been working through some things, but every once in a while I do decide I want to sit down and sew. What I have not been doing much of though is taking the time to do photos of what I make. I did however take the time to get some pictures of my Halloween costume!

This year I attended an event that was 1980’s fashion themed. When I first heard what the theme was I think I actually moaned. 1980’s is not really my style and I know very little about the time period, so I decided to think about what things I did like about the 1980's. I ran through a few ideas in my head before settling on Vanna White. When I was a child I wanted to be Vanna, I wanted to wear a new pretty dress everyday and turn letters and everything about Vanna was just so glamorous to a little kid. I mean seriously a new fancy dress everyday! Not to mention between Wheel of Fortune and Sesame street I was reading by the time I was four. So yes I have fondness for the show which was airing all the way back in the 1980’s and is still on today. And thus began my search online for dresses Vanna wore in the 1980’s. I chose a few I liked, saved the pictures then checked out my fabric stash. Ultimately I ended up choosing the gold dress because I had fabric for it.

The fabric was not actually from my fabric stash though, It was a tablecloth. Yep I am wearing a tablecloth! the tablecloth is from my sister's wedding several years back. I figured we would never use it again, its been sitting there for years untouched and it was the perfect color so it was time to transform the tablecloth into a dress.

Turning it into the dress was not quite as easy as I hoped it would be though. This was mostly because I was being stubborn about not putting any money into the dress,(I had to buy the shoes and didn't want to spend anymore on a costume). I don’t have a one shouldered dress pattern, so I was determined to save money and draft it myself. This turned out to be a little trickier than I had anticipated. And took a lot of sewing, trying on, tearing apart, resewing, pinning, and more tearing apart. I did all this on the lining fabric as I figured it wouldn’t matter that much if the lining looked a bit worn out, no one was going to see it. After several attempts and redos plus crying a few tears I finally had the fit I wanted and was able to cut the fashion fabric. Once I had the fashion fabric it went fairly smoothly.

I had to do two more fittings but that was easy alterations, nothing major. I also had to figure out how to make the sleeve ruffle since I needed it to stand up but not be overly stiff. I had thought about interfacing, but thought that might be to much and decided on some crinoline and that worked fairly well. For the skirt part I used Vogue pattern #1189 from the 1980’s, and that part went really fast comparatively speaking with the rest of the dress.

The Bodice has two linings, one is a structure lining which I interfaced each piece to give the dress stability, the other is just a normal lining. I added boning to also help with stability. It zips in the back and I actually had a gold colored zipper in my stash which I was pretty excited about, because it would match so perfectly. I was a little disappointed that I accidentally put the sleeve on the opposite side of the dress Vanna wore, but that's the trouble with working with fabrics that have no right and wrong side. In the end though I was really proud of the dress I made and I think it turned out really pretty.
I also made myself an oversized scrunchie, to match, because what is more 1980’s than that?
I had thought about wearing a blonde wig to more embrace the Vanna-ness, but decided I would rather be comfortable and it was all about the dress anyway, so I went with my natural hair. And for a little extra fun bonus and because I had a little extra time I dressed my kitties up as letters from the letter board. And I will say it is not easy to take pictures of three cats standing in an assigned order while using the self timer on the camera so I could be in the photo as well. But here we are. Ayla as the letter C, Astra as the letter A, B.W. as an unturned letter (in case you can't tell she is going to be the letter T), and myself as a brunette version of Vanna White. I had fun dressing up the cats and fun dressing myself up, and I had fun at the event as well. all in all it was a rather fun Halloween.

P.S If you want to see a picture of Vanna’s dress that I copied; google “Vanna White 1986 gold dress” it should come up.

Elf Jacket

I started making this jacket for another project back in september. I was trying to put together a halloween costume, but was not really feeling it. It was something I did not choose and just really didn’t like, but I had been told it was the theme for what I was going to attend. I tried really hard to make myself like the idea but kept putting it off. It turned out that was a good thing because of scheduling I didn’t get to attend the halloween thing I was going to and at the last minute they changed the theme anyway so I would have felt totally stupid wearing a custume I hated. Actually I probably would have scrapped the whole thing and worn an old costume. That is how much I disliked the original theme.

What I did end up with was a white jacket ¾ of the way done. I probably would have gone ahead and finished the jacket regardless of not going to the halloween thing (without the embellishments that I had planned) but I ran into some issues with the fabric I had chosen. First I found out it was dry clean only. And how did I figure this out… I washed it. But there were no instructions on the bolt so I had no idea. I had bought the 30 yard bolt at a tag sale for $8, not even knowing it was 30 yards till I started this project. It just sat in my closet for a few years trying to tell me what it needed to be. When I started this project I went ahead and unrolled the entire bolt so I could see how much fabric it was. And I was actually pretty surprised to find out it was 30 yards. I was going to use the fabric as the liner in the jacket as well so I went ahead and cut off 9 yards and that is what I washed. When it came out of the washer I was very disappointed to see all the lovely sheen had washed away. I almost gave up then, but decided it didn't really matter that much and went ahead and cut out the pattern. I am glad I only washed the 9 yards though, if I do decide to use the 21 yards left on something I will know not to wash it first.

In any case I worked hard at getting this jacket done only to realize the fabric was much too heavy to use as the lining. The lining bagged out horribly and it looked sloppy. It was around this time I realized the scheduling issue and decided to just give up on the whole jacket. The fabric was ruined and it wouldn’t hang right. So I just left it on the mannequin for the next few months.

Now jump forward to december 3rd and I am going back and forth between wanting to dress like an elf or not for a thing I was attending. Some people were going dressed like an elf, while others were not. It was totally up to us. And one of the gals said something to me about how she expected me to dress as an elf and she was expecting something great. She was not being bossy or anything we were just joking around. But it got me thinking maybe I could turn the disaster of a jacket into something beautiful.

And so began the remake. First off I knew I had literally three weeks to get this done and no idea what I was going to do. So I started scheming that day. I still wouldn't commit to yes I was going to dress as an elf because I was scared I wouldn't have time to finish the project. And I have been struggling with sewing mentally ever since walking out of a bad situation that involved sewing last spring. I am not going to go into any of that just that it really messed with me and made me feel like I was incapable of sewing anymore. Which I hated, and I kept trying to get it back. I have struggled with several projects since then and spent a lot of crying and being upset that I couldn’t love the thing that always brought me joy, but I was also determined to get that joy back and refused to stop sewing.