Dear sewing machine. suck it. love vampy

As I have the memory span of a goldfish, I decided I wanted to make some dresses. I KNOW I am shit at sewing, but somehow a combination of forgetting how much I whined last time, desire to have pretty dresses, and pretty much complete denial that there is something I am useless at allowed me to think I can make myself a dress.

I bought this dress a while ago, and I LOVE it. But I don’t really like the fact that it’s a halterneck, and the net is itchy. A sensible plan would have been to make an underskirt and deal with the halterneck, but well, that was sensible, so instead i decided I will make a similar dress based on this shape but with real straps and no net….and if i do make a petticoat for it to add volume, it’ll be from non-itchy net.

newdress

I bought pretty fabric with blueberries on, partly cos it was pretty, and partly cos it was cheap. I forgot to photograph it though, but well, it has blueberries on, use your imagination. Ok, someone on rav asked for a pic, so i guess you get to see it too. Here, blueberries.

blueberries

Being a cheapass with a strange body shape, I gave up fairly fast on the idea of finding a pattern that would do what I want (seriously ebay, fucking £15 for a vintage pattern, REALLY??)…I may consider spending that on a pattern that I knew would actually fit me, but seeing as I’d have to adjust it in lots of places, £15 can fuck right off. Hell, that’s more than the fabric cost.

So I sat on my living room floor with a couple of dresses for inspiration, and approximately 12 miles of muslin. I did some tracing and highly technical drawing in biro, then a bit of cutting and pinning, finally I actually did some damn sewing, and I came up with this:

icansew

After a contemplative nap, i realised i didn’t like those straps, so i took it apart and redid it, and came up with this:

icansew2

It looks a little crappy cos it’s big on the ribcage and the straps are too long, but on the real thing i will actually measure and fix the straps myself rather than getting gren to do it, and the back will be smocked or shirred or whatever the correct technical term is for ‘made elasticy so it fits without me needing to subject myself to the trauma of trying to sew in a zip’. I am hoping that this, and the use of a fabric that is considerably heavier than muslin will mean that the real thing will fit better and look better. At the very least, at least my nipples won’t be visible through it.

I have defeated you in round one of this battle sewing machine, please play nice tomorrow when i begin work on the real thing. Thank you.

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