Another Floral Wedding Guest Dress

What a fun, beautiful (and exhausting) wedding! As I mentioned in my earlier post about the rehearsal, the venue at Mountain Terrace was simply amazing. The views were pretty and tranquil, the deck sparkled with white Christmas lights after sunset, and the glowing dining room inside was decorated perfectly, from the too-cute succulent plant place card holders to the pretty gold & white table runners and beautiful flower arrangements. So lovely.

It was an emotional and exciting day, and somehow that makes me even more glad I sewed my own dress to commemorate and celebrate such a fun and meaningful event. The day held a lot of firsts for me.

• First time I had my makeup done professionally and WORE FAKE EYELASHES! Felt like I was a movie star.

• First time I was in a wedding and did a reading as part of the ceremony. Yikes, I was nervous.

• First time I ate Princess Cake, which was so delicious!

• First time I saw my dad out on the dance floor, tearing it up and cracking me up (in the best way). He was great!

• First time I got to really hang out with some of my (half)sister's relatives basically since I was a baby. So fun!

My sister picked the Avett Brother's song "January Wedding" to play as she walked out with my dad, and I totally started crying (somehow without ruining the multiple layers of eye-makeup). That song just gets me every time.

Once I got used to (as much as I could) my intense makeup, I found that I was rather pleased with my overall outfit for the wedding. My me-made dress ended up being pretty perfect -- certainly not made perfectly, but great to wear. Except for the fact that I was pretty cold (dramatically refusing to put on my coat) when we were outside for the ceremony, my outfit looked and felt good throughout the night. It was nice to not be wearing something the least bit uncomfortable and I just loved looking down at the pretty, painterly floral print.

For the dress, I used New Look 6000, just the plain sleeveless version. I stitched it up in a floral cotton sateen that had shades of purple, dark blue, black, teal, and white. The entire dress was lined in bemberg rayon, which was a little easier to do than on my rehearsal dress, because this dress is just one main piece, rather than being broken up with a waist seam.

Mistakes I made in sewing this dress include: not lining up the top of the zipper properly, so that it accidentally extends up past the back neckline opening and shows (oh well), and, again, not getting the length of the lining quite right, so that it bunches and shows a little in the front when I'm wearing the dress.

I don't know if this qualifies as a mistake really, but I also took two fitting shortcuts in sewing this dress. I added little darts around the neckline, which luckily don't distract the eye thanks to the busy print. This reduced the neckline and upper bust gaping that was going on. I also stitched the dress side seams including the lining along with the fashion fabric, as one - almost like underlining. This made it easy to take in the sides without needing to sew a ginormous seam keeping the lining separate from the dress. 

The dress is hemmed similarly, with a single hem including both the lining and fashion fabric. I just did a machine hem because, again, the busy print almost totally hides the stitching.

 

Cheers - to a fun wedding and a great dress! I'm glad I forced myself to finally sit down and sew the darn thing, rather than wimping out and buying something instead (I'd considered it). The fabric was somewhat of an unusual choice for me. I don't really have anything else like it in my closet, but I'm glad I chose it! The colors are pretty, the cotton sateen was easy to sew with, and the print hid all of my less-than-ideal sewing decisions. It was a win-win-win, if you ask me!

Finished Project: Polka Dotted New look 6000

It's finally here! Actually, this dress has been finished and hanging out on the dress form for a week or two, now. I've been meaning to take photos of it, but couldn't quite manage any of me wearing it just yet - I'll try to post some of those soon! Hopefully it will be getting warmer around here in the near future so I can take some photos outside...

Anyway, this is my pretty, polka dotted New Look 6000 for the Frock Fest held by Winnie over at Scruffy Badger Time. I'd had the pattern in my stash for a long time, and paired it up with another long-time stash-dweller, some  blue stretch "sateen" cotton with white spots. I'd bought it online with the vague intention of using the fabric for a party dress, but when it arrived in the mail, it was much lighter weight and not as sateen-y as I'd hoped. For my New Look 6000, I underlined the light weight fabric with muslin, similar to my technique used on my Holiday dress, to give the fabric some more heft/weight. Though, this time, I did not include a skirt (or any) lining.

 

Once I'd sewn everything up, added on the sleeves with little pleats at the top rather than easing & setting in the sleeve as prescribed (my least favorite sewing task), you may recall that I couldn't quite decide what to do with the sleeve cuffs. The pattern has cute little pointed cuffs, but they just didn't seem right to me for my version.

I ended up trying to re-create a "camp shirt" style sleeve (there's probably another, more proper name for this?) that a couple of shirts in my closet have, where the sleeve is long and rolls up to a shorter length, with a button tab to keep it in place. It's definitely a more casual look, but that's what I was going for.

This dress was fun to sew - it reminded how much simpler a one-piece shift dress, with no waist seam, is to sew. And it made inserting the zipper (which I botched a little bit, as usual) easier, too. The only thing is, when I try it on, I feel like this dress demands to be worn with a belt, at least on me, and the only one in my closet that works with it is this yellow bow belt. I love the belt, I was just hoping I'd have more options.

zooooomed out back shot - don't look to closely at my zipper, or the back neckline (it's missing a hook & eye)

So what do you think -- Did I make the right choice with the sleeves? Would you have used the pointy cuffs instead?  Have any of you sewn this pattern before?


Thanks for bearing with me through the mediocre photos - they were taken on my iPad and not edited, as my computer has finally croaked. I've not quite mastered blog posting via iPad - yet. :)

A frock-sewing dilemma...

So I've been working on my polka-dotted New Look 6000 dress I gave you a sneak peek of a few days ago. Everything was going swimmingly, until I got to some of the last steps - the sleeves!

What first drew me to this pattern, when I bought it like 2 years ago, was the cute collar and cuff options. Well, for this version, I'm making view E - no collar, but with the cute cuffs. Or, at least, that's what I'd planned. Now that I've got the sleeves on, and have tried on the dress-in-progress, I'm really not liking the look of the 3/4 length sleeves and can't imagine I'll be any happier with them once the cuffs are attached. Standing in front of the mirror, I started rolling up one of the sleeves...

...and I actually quite liked the shorter length. It's not nearly as short as the other, cap-sleeved option in the pattern, and seems just right to me. I'm also liking that this length and silhouette of sleeve would work well with layering under cardigans, which the pointy (but cute) cuff I'd originally planned for would not do.

However, I'm undecided on the cuffed look of a rolled-up sleeve. Should I use some contrasting fabric? Or maybe go for little ties, like Sunni did on her adorable shirt-dress? Maybe no cuffs at all, but just cut the sleeve to the length it's currently rolled to? I can't decide - please help!

What would you do?

Lately...

Hello! Here is a quick look at my current sewing project. I'm still marinating on some ideas for the second Mad Men Challenge, so I'll be sharing more details and inspiration soon. In the meantime, I've been working on this.  Hint: this project just might have something to do with the Frock Fest underway over at Scruffy Badger Time. :)