The Illumining Dress

Here’s this week’s project. Butterick 5851 top with my own vertical, horizontal sides skirt. This dress was a lot easier to cut than to assemble. Everything was going well, until the first fitting. The top needed some adjusting. That is to be expected. What caused the challenge was getting the skirt to line up with the pleats that I previously created on the fabric itself. Seeing the pleats were made by human hands, meant that not all pleats matched up as a pre-weaved fabric. It was very frustrating, to say the least. Despite the fact that I had to tear it apart and start over again, I kept moving the project forward. I was afraid of losing momentum.

The gussets too, were a bit of a pain. I’ve worked with countless gussets in the past, but usually it’s the “V” kind that connects under the arm and side seams. This pattern required the four corners. After reading the directions and giving it a go, it was fine.

 
I also worked the midriff with boning. I didn’t want to see any puckering or wrinkles. The material required the dress to be super fitted. I mean “super fitted.”

 

I was so tired of working on this dress that I took a day’s break from it and made a matching clutch purse just for fun. This is what I came up with. I’ve made many bags in the past. The most important thing is to underline it with some sort of padding. No padding, no life to the bag.

 
I even went as far as to incorporate an inside pocket with zipper. Anything to keep me happily busy and not have to think about going back to working on the dress. Eventually, I did.

 

At some point you have to move forward and just finish what you’ve started. I stopped being hard on myself and boy, what a relief that was. During one of my final fittings, yes there were many fittings! I went to my closet looking for shoes to use for measuring the hemline with. To my surprise, I found these. I couldn’t believe it . A perfect fit. All my life I’ve adored matching handbags and shoes. You know the type... you find them at the high end boutiques. The ones I’m afraid to go in. I can’t afford anything in them. Even so, this is the closest I’ll ever come to a perfect matching set.

 

If that wasn’t enough, I felt the waistline too could use an accessory. I was thinking maybe someday, I would shop for a perfect matching belt, who knew I had this one in my closet as well. I think it’s OK for now. Maybe someday, I’ll find something more exciting.

 

My first two responses to the dress were great! My mother couldn’t stop smiling and nodding her head in disbelieve and my husband too was so impressed that he offered to take me out to someplace worthy of this new dress. So much joy and life is coming out of my sewing studio. Well, that’s it for this week folks. Next week, I plan on revisiting some material I’ve recently worked with and create something with the remnants. Till then, I hope your motivated to sew and create anything that makes you happy. And as always, thank you for sharing in my sewing journey. Have a great weekend everyone!