Two Dresses, One Update.

Since the last update I've obtained some key items to advance my attire making. With each purchase I told Dana, "This is the best thing ever" so I'm pretty excited about all of them.
1. Rotary Cutter and board. Oh. My. God. Why on earth was I cutting out my fabric with scissors?? This is the best invention ever. (maybe not ever) I save so much time-and back pain-from these! The part of sewing I hate is the cutting, its time consuming, not exciting, not creative, just tedious. That pain is a thing of the past, I get dress pieces cut out in roughly a quater of the time. It's wonderful. (with coupons I think they cost me $25 total)
2. Invisible zipper foot. Now my zippers look a lot less like crap. Awesome. ($4 from Amazon, $10 with speedy shipping)
3. Dressform. Instead of stabbing myself several times, bleeding and just generally getting over projects real fast I can throw some fabric on this headless, armless plastic and foam lady standing next to my kitchen table and pin to fit her (my) measurements. ($100-well worth it)
Nice Job Erin!

So, on to my projects.

Project Number One:Simplicity 2209. (I feel stupid, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to flip this image.. oh well...)

I made my first attempt with silk, with less than perfect results. Its very slippery and ...distorty (?) Of course I had a couple glasses of wine to add to the mixture, but cutting out silk is not an easy task with scissors (this was prior to my rotary purchase). I picked a super easy pattern and it would have been a piece of cake except for the slippery nature and the easily shredding of the silk. But alas, I still think I made a really cute dress.

 

(I think this is my little teapot impression??) I made a size 10. It's a little tight in the booby area, but the nature of the silk might have meant I took the darts in a smidge too much. I wasn't thinking and forgot to add pockets, bummer. Overall, I love the print, I love the pattern, I will wear it but I'm just a little disappointed with my execution. 

The fabric was on sale and the end of a bolt so it only cost $8. The pattern was $1 and the zipper was kicking around my sewing box, so total project, $9!

Project Number Two:Modified Butterick 5601. (can't flip this one either.. I'm a dummy)

I used the bodice from this dress but gave it a much fuller skirt. Super, super easy pattern. I used my yellow eyelet fabric with a white muslin lining. I was afraid it was going to come out too little girlish, but I think it just came out super cute. I love this dress.

Check out the back!

 This dress came together without any troubles, until Saturday morning-it was already finished-I decided I wanted to make the bodice a little tighter fitting. I planned on wearing this dress on Saturday to Bremi's engagement party and I knew I was taking a risk taking the zipper out and the second I started to do it all I could think was, "this was a mistake." I put a freaking zipper in this dress 4 times, FOUR!? After I took it out, I put it back in and, time crunched me-went to put it on to see how the fit was without stitching the bottom of the zipper-so the zippy part fell right off. GAH! After a little break, where I had a mini meltdown in the shower, I came back to put another zipper in. Ripped out the first one, put the second one in, twisted. At this point mimosas and pastries had arrived thanks to Dan and Brighid and I had decided I was done. I put a different dress on, and then sauntered over to the cute yellow dress I had made speccifically for the day, calmly ripped out one side of the zipper and fixed it. Triumphantly, I wore the dress with those adorable sandals Dana got me and had a lovely day.

Next in the lineup is a simple sundress I've had in the back of my mind for a few weeks. That's on my plate for today (along with chopping the shaggy mess of hair off my head.)