post-traumatic dress

out of all the many faces i’ve been known to have, this is my HOLY-SHIT-I-MADE-A-DRESS-AND-I’M-CLEARLY-WEARING-IT-WHAT-THE-FOOK-IS-GOING-ON-I’M-ENORMOUSLY-EXCITED-BUT-ALSO-A-LITTLE-SCARED face.

yeah, something truly bizarre is going on here. i’ve never made a dress and have rarely been seen sporting one. i’m a die-hard pants-and-a-t-shirt kind of girl. or no-pants-and-an-oversized-sweatshirt kind of girl, to be more exact. so imagine mine and everyone else’s astonishment when out of all the things one could move on to after a few wikstens and two alder shirt dresses (of which i will eventually make a big public hoohaa, i promise), i picked this butterick 6086 dress pattern and then just made it. like no biggie. fully lined, you know, with no raw seams anywhere, and gathers, and POCKETS.

and WTF is that headband thing there? with golden leaves and shit? I LITERALLY NEVER.

i also now own a pair of heels that are covered in GOLD GLITTER. i can’t take a picture of them because my camera would spontaneously self-combust due to all that GOLD GLITTER. did i mention the GOLD GLITTER? GOLD GLITTER, ANYONE?

i’m moderately certain the only reasonable explanation for this is the fact that after all the aneurysm-inducing traumatic crap i’ve had to endure this year my body’s in some kind of reboot mode. like “dude genetically you’re a girl and you’re still alive and doing well enough so how about you just go forth and procriate or whatever but not with babies but with like girly things and self-confidence and shit.”

i picked up this fabric from my go-to fabric haven, spool of thread. it’s a luxurious cotton sateen from kokka fabrics – devastatingly expensive but so lovely to work with that money simply loses its meaning. for the lining i used a cheap black cotton voile from dressew with a side of their exquisitely bad service, but i knew what i was getting into so can’t complain too much there. i was tempted to get something more slippery for the lining to make the skirt drape better, but decided to make things easier for myself by picking 100% cotton so the two layers would be easier to sew.

i made the smallest size and only had to tweak the bodice a little by lowering the waistline by an inch, taking in the shoulders a bit and losing a little excess fabric in the upper back as well as the boobage area. to answer everyone’s most pressing question, YES THE GIRL WHO DOESN’T SWATCH MADE A MUSLIN. i’m as scared as you are. thanks to the mods the fit is almost perfect, apart from those weird front shoulder puckers and a bit of wrinkling at the back armholes, although the front puckers didn’t appear until after having had the dress up on a hanger for two days, so i feel like that must have stretched the neckline somehow. but with just a few more tweaks i can just keep using that same bodice for ALL THE DRESSES because switching the skirt portion to different lengths and shapes is almost guaranteed to be an easy enough thing to do.

this dress also called for inserting the longest zipper i’ve ever worked with, which was rather daunting at first because the pattern instructions were completely unintelligible and i had no idea whatsoever what they we’re wanting me to do. but i took a deep breath, put on some ride the lightning and just did it in a way that made sense to me – which was to sandwich it between the two layers of fabric with the raw edges folded inside and then just baste and sew. it’s not super neat but it successfully holds a dress together and again has all the raw edges hidden inside so i’m absolutely calling it a success. what you also might not see in the picture above is how perfectly the colour of the zipper matches the birds. the birds are not black. they’re very very very dark purple. and somehow i managed to find a very very very dark purple zipper. it’s just sheer perfection all over.

but perhaps the most important thing about this dress is that i already wore it to the outside world and got all the free drink tickets much warranted compliments for it at our office christmas party last week. wait. no. that’s a lie. the most important thing about this dress is that i’ve already ordered enough fabric to make two more dresses. then there will be nothing but dresses. dresses. dresses. heels. nailpolish. heels dresses headbands earrings HEELS DRESSES DRESSES DRESSES LIPSTICK HANDBAGS DRESSES PLEASE HELP ME

many thanks to ashley for the photos!