Mad Men Dress Challenge - Round 2

You guys, it's here! Time to reveal my 2013 Mad Men dress. This year I was inspired by a cute dress worn by a character who is not one of the show's famous leading ladies. Her name is Gigi, and apparently she made a brief appearance in Season 4: Episode 4 wearing this green bow dress.

MM S4:E4, Gigi

Yes, another green dress! To create my version, I used vintage (c. 1968) Simplicity 7980 and added the bow detail from modern Simplicity 2154.

Simplicity 2154 + Simplicity 7980

And here you have my finished product:

And here I am, making my best Gigi-serious-face, which required hair twirling (my nervous habit).

You'll notice my dress is a slightly darker shade of green, whereas Gigi's is more of a...teal or "jungle" green. I've also added a keyhole to the front because, much as I'd wish it were from time to time, this is not the 1960s and that high, round neckline can't always work in daily life.

My dirty secrets about making this dress?

1) It was squeezed out of a yard and a half of thick, lush (read: oddly spongy), thrifted-at-the-last-minute polyester.

2) There are no seam finishes inside - even the hem was only just turned and stitched! The thick polyester is not prone to fraying and I just honestly couldn't be bothered to fuss with it.

3) I effed-up the armhole and neck-keyhole facings (oops, no close-ups available!) because I forced bias tape in there instead of cutting actual facings out of another fabric when I ran out of my thifted polyester. The drape and thickness of the dress fabric made it surprisingly difficult to attach the bias tape facings and caused a lot of puckering and weird dimply spots.

4) Upon completing the dress, I was feeling pretty OVER IT. Then I wore it to work a few days later, it was super comfortable, and I fell back in love with it.

Certainly a different tune than I sang to you all when I shared my dress for last year's challenge. Not much unnecessary struggling with lining or setting in sleeves this time around, and honestly, though it was simpler to sew and is less polished & fussed over than last year's, this is a more wearable dress for me. Hopefully it'll be making another appearance or two during Me-Made-May '13. :)

And on that note, I'll BOW OUT (ha-ha-ha! - get it?). Time to get stitchin' on my next project!

Oh! and a big THANK YOU to Julia for hosting this fun challenge again. Be sure to check out all of this year's other entries over on JuliaBobbin's blog in the next few days. I know I'm super excited to see them!