I found this old gold velvet map fabric online. It's got a bit of stretch to it and has a nice heavy substantial weight to it. I decided to use a pattern from The Party Dress Book: How to Sew the Best Dress in the Room
I added pockets, too. <-- possibly a mistake. Also, it was possibly a mistake to use this heavy fabric for what is supposed to be a flirty party dress. Anyhoo... I'm working on some fitting. The lower part of the torso needs to be lengthened and the bodice strap is making me twitchy.I had all sorts of ideas for incorporating some sort of Ardiuno into this dress. Upon further consideration I realize this would be distracting and TOO MUCH. I will be adding some embroidery to it, however.The Arduino powered dress will come later and needs more thought.
Forest Dress
I finally finished the Forest Dress. I started sewing this dress about 5 years ago when my son was a baby. The fabric is Timeless Treasures vintage lawn that I found in a thrift shop, or maybe I bought it at the Oakland White Elephant Sale. The black trim is an old black sheet that I repurposed into various things. The dress lining (skirt and front bodice only) is a really pretty black on black striped lawn.
I've not been slacking in the sewing dept. for 5 years. This just got wadded up and put in a box and I forgot about it. It's more a testament to ADHD. I love to start things and once I have the basic idea out there I get bored of it. Details! Annoying, annoying details!When I started getting obsessed with combining sewing and thinking about landscape design I remembered it and pulled it out. Since it was already started I figured I could finish it up real quick. Of course, that didn't happen. I started 2 other dresses in the middle of it (again?!) and THEN... horror of horrors, I accidentally locked my cat in my studio and um... let's just say that my cat destroyed the pattern pieces.I (mostly) used McCall's M4769 for this dress and since I have made other dresses with this pattern I was able to reverse engineer the missing pieces.I can tell I started this dress right when I got my serger. I serged the skirt seems with elastic thread I was using to sew myself some bathing suits at the same time. ahahaha. WHY?! Probably I did this because threading elastic nylon thread into a serger is a huge pain.
Fabrics: vintage lawn - brown blue and black forest scene, old black sheet, trim: striped lining: black striped lawnNotions: vintage pearly shank buttonsPattern: partially McCall's M4769, partially my own slopers, partial some reverse engineered/jiggered piecesTime to sew: oh, about 5 years. :DTheme: Vintage forests.