The Dumb Luck Dress

Hello, and welcome to Me Made June, a magical time in which sewers the world over show off their hand crafted clothing! And thank you, Zoe, for making this happen! This is my first ever Me Made event, and I think I’m ready. It also coincides with my one year sewversery, which techinally came and went  at the end of May. However, I was still on crutches at the time and in no mood to celebrate, so we will just pretend it’s the first of June. Okay? Okay.

So in honor of both of these momentous events I present to you not one, not two, but THREE items I have made that I am currently wearing! Yes, it’s a whole outfit, with accessories and everything! Now, don’t you go getting used to this sort of thing. I think I can just scrape by wearing one me-made outfit a day, but any more then that is dicey. We will just wait and see how I do, shall we? And hats off (I should make a hat!) to Zoe, who even makes her own underwear, or as she calls them, pants. Ah, the UK, where nothing is as it seems.

Now, you might be curious, why is this dress, the main event, so to speak, called The Dumb Luck Dress? Well, to those of you who Burda Style it up, you may recognize this little pattern haunting the blogosphere:

BurdaStyle Pattern #101 from 2/2011

It’s cute, right? It’s super cute. It’s a nice classic shape. And you would think everyone would love it, no? Well, people do love it. Or at least, people have tried it. And everyone has a different complaint. To begin with, when you buy the pattern you actually just get a bodice pattern, the skirt is just rectangles, which I think is okay, but I can understand being indignant over paying for a pattern and only getting the top part. But then the nice ladies of Sew Weekly tried it out, and everyone had a fresh gripe, it’s too revealing, it fits weirdly, it’s unflattering, so on and so forth. So with this in mind, you would think I would stay the hell away from this pattern, or at least make several thousand muslins before I tried it, right? Wrong. I just made the damn thing. And you know what?

I like it! I really like!

See? Look how happy I am in the dress with which everyone has an issue! And in my walking cast, no less! Perhaps I’m just really happy to be off my crutches?

No. It’s the dress! I really like this dress, guys, I’m even making a second one for my theater company’s premiere of our spring show on Monday! It’s going to look so good with my bootie. What with the 80 degree weather here and the sexiness of the boot, I am just going to be beating them off with a stick. Oh, well, it’s a musical, it’s not like any guy there will be swinging my way anyway.  So, wonder of wonders, this bodice actually fits me quite well!

The material is actually a bedsheet that I dyed with Jacquard idye in Royal Blue. The packet is deceptively dark, whereas the final result is rather paler then I’d imagined, but I still like it! It almost looks like chambray, right? So in that sense the whole dress is a muslin, it was made from cheap materials etc, but it’s a wearable muslin, if you believe in such things. In some circles that’s quite a debate.

So what did I change from the original pattern? Well, I added pockets, obviously, because they improve all things. And I moved the zipper from the side to the back, and used a visible zipper rather then an invisible one. My request for zippers to live free and be visible continues. And I also said no to a gathered skirt and yes to a circle skirt, because I had enough fabric, and because it’s fun to do this:

I also made the headband:

And I made the bag! And the bag was my VERY FIRST PROJECT. EVER. Well, since I started really sewing and not just messing around. It was the project I made in my Spool intro to sewing class! And since have made, like, 10. For friends. It’s a great bag to give to people! And it’s reversible! Which is dope, or would be, if I was the kind of person who said things are dope. It’s funny, because Karen Did You Make That showed off her first project on Tilly’s blog (just go with it) and of course it’s a lovely blouse. Karen is a rockstar. I am but a lowly groupie, however, so I made a bag. And you better like it, because you are going to be seeing a hell of a lot of it this month, folks.

So there it is, my first day of Me Made June, my first attempt at the dress everyone has something to say about, and my very first project, a year later. Struggle, 1, June, 0.