Vintage Lace and Velvet

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Pink Graduation Dress

Since I’m a big fan of planning ahead, especially when it allows me to procrastinate on projects in life due sooner, I have begun work on my dress for graduation.

See, I’m thinking about doing Me Made May, but I’m also graduating from college in May. So what am I to do but make a dress to wear?

I’ve attended graduation at my college once before, and it was quite warm. Like almost uncomfortable warm.

So it was time to make a nice warm weather dress.

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This fabric is special, though.

My mother, when she was a teenager, made her own clothes, but stopped later, as she had continual fights with her sewing machine. But she kept all of her fabric.

Including this lovely polyester georgette pink beauty! So when I raided her stash last year, we both agreed that it would make a lovely sundress.

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So in following that, I decided it would make the perfect dress for graduation! A bit of old before I venture on to something new!

I redrafted my strapless bodice, which somehow was still too big when I tried it on! I took in the bodice as I went, leaving plenty in the back for attaching the zipper.

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When I had been planning to make a ballroom dress, I had already cut the fabric into two parts, a bodice part, and a skirt part. I made the waistband and attached it to the bodice, then pleated  the skirt to the under waistband, then I took the needle to the over waistband.

I put in the zipper by hand, which was an adventure… I didn’t want to cut into the dress fabric, in case I went too far, so I ended up folding over the triangle of fabric.

Then a month went by.

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I tacked this extra fabric down, tacked the neckline down instead of figuring out a facing (since I’ve never made a facing), and then doing my version of a rolled hem. I’m not sure if it is the right way to do a rolled hem, but it worked for me.

It turned out better than I had hoped! Having that much fabric in the skirt gives it automatic volume! No petticoat or alternate puffyness needed.

I love the silhouette of this dress, nipped in at the waist and puffy, but still knee length, which is snazzy.

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I already picked my shoes out,  so I finally have an excuse to wear them! I got them abroad and they’ll be perfect for this!

I am all ready for May, then! Maybe can we just skip forward a month? Just until midterms craziness ends?