ufo 2 Archives • Jessica Smith Creates

January 12, 2015August 19, 2018

New Years Dress… A Little Late

I finally got around to starting, and finishing it, a few weeks before Christmas.

About time! I had already had the project for over 3 years!

Since its been awhile, I’ll recap.

I got this dress from my boss at the costume shop where I worked during college. It had been falling apart for a while, which made it perfect for the zombie thesis it was last in, but not for actual wear as a costume. So my boss gave it to me to play around with.

I ended up taking off the lace top since it was a bit too fragile to stay together on its own, and then let it sit around for forever.

So in December I finally made an approximate pattern for the lace top out of this polyester lace, I sewed it up, and I carefully sewed it to the velvet. At this point it was still very much below knee length, which I never wear, especially in a party context. Instead of cutting off at the bottom, though, I decided to bring the skirt up at the waist, in order to give it a waistline, which i liked, but also to show off the cool detailing of the skirt, which is a subtle seaming of the velvet that might even be too subtle to show in pictures.

It got its first outing on New Year’s Eve when I went to a party for maybe an hour… I stayed up to watch the ball drop though, so I still feel like I’m not a party pooper!

I even got a few compliments, by people who didn’t even know I make clothing, so I count that as a definite win!

April 7, 2014August 19, 2018

Vintage Lace and Velvet

At long last, ufo 2 has been found and can finally be shown off!

This dress was given to me by my boss when it really began to fall apart.

Someone used it in a short-run production that featured zombies, which made this a perfect dress at the time, but after that it was really unusable as a costume. Once it can’t be washed or dry-cleaned, it loses usability.

I’m not sure whether its a real 20s dress, but I’m pretty sure that’s the era it was supposed to be from.

Alas, I can’t show you it in its complete form, as I tried to work on this dress previous to starting this blog.

But here are the parts of the dress, and what I’ll be using to fix it up.

First up is the main part of the dress, made of a deep, deep blue velvet. It’s a very lightweight velvet, which is soft and nice ad well worn.

Personally, I don’t find this dress flattering.

You see, I have this thing called a stomach, and my stomach likes to be fed, and simultaneously doesn’t like crunches. Trust me, I’m working on talking to it about this.

But I like wide skirts, the twirly effect! This dress is more like a sheath, with a little bit of swing at the bottom.

It also comes too low at the top, when I had tried it on with the original lace top, and it is a very long dress on me.

I’m contemplating options, if you couldn’t tell.

Here is the original top, made of what looks to me like a cotton lace. It had aged to such a lovely yellow-brown color, but I assume the original color was a yellow-beige.

But it nearly fell away as I cut it from its hold on the velvet body. It was ready for relief.

Finally, this is the top I’m planning to use to rework this dress. It’s a very white polyester lace top.

Remember my Belle mock 2? That was the original shirt I was going to use, but I snapped it up for that project when I couldn’t at all find this one. But a recent discovery brought this one back to the light!

I’ll probably not end up working on this for awhile, but I thought it was high time to show it to you guys!

April 28, 2013

Good ol’ shopping!

Who doesn’t love shopping! Well, kinda me, but when I get goodies, especially lovely and gorgeous goodies, it all works out for the best!

So, I got lots of fun stuff, but I’ll be showing you the highlights.

Isn’t this button cool! It reminded me of Gallifreyan, and so I had to buy it, even though it was the last button in stock! If there had been more, who knows how many I would have gotten!

These are three throw pillow covers in a brilliant copper, with a suede pattern on the front of the pillows. It was so Tardis-y that I couldn’t stand it! Charity shops are fantastic!!

So I haven’t shown you this project yet, but it will become UFO number 2, upon return to the states, when I can get my hands on it to take some pictures! This is a stretchy lace shirt that I picked up to save some time and effort in finding the perfect lace and making a shirt top.