Prom dress

I can't believe it took me so long to post about this. I made this for my senion prom in 2001. That is me and my date, who was my best friend and went to grad school in Chicago, so now we get to hang out again. If I get ambitious, maybe I'll go scan in some other pictures from prom too. As you'll see when you scroll down, there are three tiers and a hoop skirt.

This is a Butterick "making history" pattern, and I think it is supposed to be an antebellum-style southern belle dress. Of course, it is not at all what a dress from that time would actually look like because women no longer wear corsets, and I didn't use any boning or anything. I would probably not have chosen this now because of issues with romanticizing that time period, but at the time I was kind of into "Gone with the Wind," and of course I thought the big billows of fabric were beautiful and elegant. It was a big challenge, which appealed to me. I think I made it during winter break that year, and it was a lot of fun. It is a heavy red satin. I still have the pattern envelope, and I don't remember whether this was 45" or 60" fabric, but it took somewhere between 7 1/2 and 10 yards of fabric and 15 3/4 yards of ivory lace. The bodice is fully self-lined, which is nice because the low neckline doesn't allow much in the way of undergarments.

The dress is so heavy that it does have a problem with kind of slipping down a little. I think if I were to make it again, I might investigate a waist stay, and I might make it tighter around the waist so it wouldn't have any room to start inching its way down. There was never any danger of a wardrobe malfunction, but I did have to adjust the bodice occasionally, and I don't enjoy fussing with my clothes.

This is me modeling it in 2009, when I was going through a closet at my parents' house and decided to see if it still fit. I thought for sure it would be far too small, but I think it looks even better now. I know it's silly, but I am a bit proud that I am still able to fit in my prom dress and that it looks so good on me, if I do say so myself. Maybe I'm just more confident in my body than I was in high school. That's a good thing, for sure!

I was invited to a costume party for German Carnivale (Fasching?), and I decided to haul it out again. For some reason it had never occurred to me as a Halloween costume. I still had the gloves I wore at prom, so I added those and did my hair in a complicated braid, which might not be historically accurate but seemed old-fashioned and easier than doing a bunch of curls. If I ever get pictures from the hostess, I will add them to this post. The ones on my camera don't really capture the look. It was fun, but wearing a hoop skirt is a bit cumbersome, especially if you want to move around and talk to different people or go get yourself a beer or anything. I was definitely glad to get home and put on normal clothes again.

September 14th

I felt so pretty in this outfit! With hints of classy and put-together. It's self-made pants, a striped sweater I bought off of a blog, and another necklace I liberated from my mom. Instead of doubling it or wearing it long, I knotted the necklace, which gave it a tie-ish look. I really dig ties on ladies and have been wanting to add some ties to my outfits, but it feels so much like a performance to wear one. It's only recently that I've paid much attention to what I wear anyway, and wearing something that bold kind of scares me.

We decided to take outfit pictures by the octopus because the aqua of the top and coral of the sweater I wore over it are sea colors. The octopus is on a wall in the alley near our apartment. It's pretty cool.

The pants are yet another really old project. I'm guessing 8th or 9th grade, so around 1998? Pants are tricky. I'm convinced pants-makers have access to secret fabrics that cling to the hiney in a way the fabrics available to us mere mortals never will. I think that home sewists have a better chance of success with wide-leg pants like these. I hadn't tried these on in ages, and I was pleasantly surprised with how flattering they still were. I was a bit worried I would have outgrown them, but they still fit. At the time I made them, low-rise and saggy pants were all the rage, and I desperately wanted to fit in, so I was never super happy with the high waist of these pants and probably tried to wear them further down on my hips. (I was a little skinnier then, so I might have been able to get away with it.) In retrospect, I see the absurdity of desperately wanting to fit in and somehow thinking that making my own clothes was anything other than a direct impediment to this goal. Luckily the creative, individualistic me was not nearly savvy enough not to make her own clothes anyway, and now I can wear these pants that she made.

For some reason, instead of doing a waistband facing like I did in the shirt skirt on the last post, I just turned the waistband over and did a blind hem stitch along it. Either I had to make the pants in a rush, or I was an even lazier sewist then than I am now. Maybe a little of both. Because of the corner-cutting, the waistband kind of stretches over the course of the day, but since it's generally hidden by clothes, it's no big deal.

I am in a quandary about re-hemming the pants. I think they're a bit too short. They're a couple inches too much above the ground when standing, and they look a bit comical when sitting. But the hem is actually really well-done, plus I don't know if I'd ever be able to press the fold all the way out. It's been like that for 13 years or so, after all. I think inertia will probably win, but if I ever need to wear these in a professional setting, I might re-hem them.

I'll close with a shot of Jon jumping as high as he can in front of the octopus.

Not bad, honey.

September 3rd

I made this corduroy skirt many years ago. It's a simple pattern-just two darts in front and four in back, along with a back zipper. It sits pretty low on my waist. I should have taken detail pictures, but I forgot. Maybe I'll post them the next time I wear this skirt. I used an invisible zipper in the back, but I set it in very poorly, and I didn't use a hook and eye at the top, but I like wearing the skirt anyway. The corduroy has held up pretty well for how old it is. It isn't threadbare on the seatyet. I think the top plus the skirt kind of made me look blobby, but it's not apparent in these pictures; my hands pull the shirt fabric in and define my waist. One of my favorite things about the skirt is that it's just wide enough to bike in, so it doesn't flap around in an embarrassing fashion, nor does constrict motion much. It's the Goldilocks of my skirts. (The Baby Bear's bed of my skirts?)

Yesterday we had a picnic lunch with a friend by the lake, and then she and I went to see Body Worlds together. (Jon doesn't like seeing the insides of people, so he stayed away from the museum.) For the sake of accuracy, I feel the need to note that I am posing next to Jon's bike in these pictures. I rode it home because he went home earlier with the picnic food, riding my bike, which has back baskets for carrying picnic food and other things. Although Jon is slightly taller than I am, our legs are the same length, so it is easy for us to swap bikes. If I look amused in these pictures, it's because the pads in my bike helmet got soaked in the rain, so I had rivulets of water coming down my face periodically.

Self-made September 2nd

It's another hot day here. (Note: I know most of my readers, if I even have plural readers, are in Texas, where it is much hotter, but we don't have air conditioning, so 90s and high humidity gets pretty unbearable in our apartment.) I spent the morning unpacking and arranging stuff, so by the time I got ready to leave, I was pretty sweaty and tired and not in the mood for spending much time on my outfit. I threw on this tank top and skirt and was done with it.

I made the top, which is the same pattern as yesterday's, for my sister a long time ago. It's a little bigger than yesterday's, and it's a cotton knit, so it feels a lot breezier. When Rachel outgrew it, it became mine again. It's pretty old and has been sweated in a lot and has started gaping at the armpits, so I should probably get rid of it, but it's so hard to get rid of homemade stuff. It was better-constructed than yesterday's shirt. I was using my own sewing machine by then, and I understood its zigzag stitch better. I made myself a halter top in this same fabric when I made this shirt for my sister, but I can't find the halter anymore. I don't think I would have thrown it away, but I've moved many times since then, and things sometimes lose themselves during that process.

I have really been enjoying complementary color pairings lately. Green and red is the hardest because of the intense cultural associations with Christmas, but since this is a very summery outfit and the skirt is on the neutral side of green, I think it works. I don't wear skirts this short very much. My preferred length is knee or just below. Recently I concluded that this is because I'm self-conscious about the angle my lower legs make with my thighs at the knee. I don't like how the thighs come in at the knee and seem to splay out below at an awkward angle. This means when I see pictures of myself in standard poses, like the one at the top of this post, I don't like the way my legs look. I always think that the pose below left will look better, but I hate it too. The only one that I like when I wear shorts or short skirts is below right, with my legs crossed. I really don't have many body-image problems, thank goodness, but this is one of those weird things that bugs me.

Self-made September 1st

We just got back from a crazy trip to the east coast yesterday, and we haven't even fully unpacked boxes in the new apartment, so I was tempted to push back the start of Self-made September. But yesterday I was unpacking the box that contained this skirt shirt, and since the forecast was in the 90s for today, I thought it would be perfect. Then I saw the very first garment I ever made, this tank top, in the closet, and decided to wear the two things together. I think this starts the month off with a bang.

The tank top is probably the worst-constructed garment I've ever made. I'm not beating myself up; it was the first thing I ever made, and it would be a shame if I hadn't gotten better since then. I'm proud of it and like that I still have it (and can still wear it 15 years later). I forgot to take detail pictures, but there is zigzag stitching along the neck and arm openings. I was making it on my mom's old machine, which is a great machine but has a harder-to-use zigzag attachment, and since it was my first attempt at sewing, it is very uneven. The bottom hemline is uneve, too. The navy color helps disguise the flaws, and I don't think it looks too weird to wear. It's quite a bit tighter on me than it was when I was 12, but I like that it nips in so much at my waist and highlights my shape. I love the cheerful print, but the fabric is not very breathable, so I exchanged it for a cotton knit top while I was working on moving-related stuff earlier today. (Side note: we finally have enough bookshelves to at least be close to containing our library. Yay!)

Refashioned skirt

I have moved into Jon's one-bedroom apartment, and we don't have room for my sewing stuff right now. We're also going to be gone most of the summer, and I should be working hard on my thesis, so I don't have time to sew anyway, but I miss it. So I'm sewing vicariously through my old projects.

My sister, who is five years younger than I am, is the same height as I am, but we have very different builds. I have almost no upper-body strength, and she can carry a harp up a flight of stairs by herself! By the time I was in high school, I was getting her outgrown clothes instead of the other way around, and now we can't really share clothes, which is a bummer because she has lots of pretty ones! Sometime when I was in high school, she gave me this pair of pants. I think they were wide-leg, low-rise, ankle-length pants at the time. The label describes them as "retro fit," whatever that is. At the time, the place where the pants sat on my hips was low enough that it made the crotch way too low, so I converted it to a skirt. As you can see, even though my hips have filled out a bit since I first made this, the waist is still pretty low.

To make these, I ripped out the inner leg and crotch seams from just below the fly. I sewed the back legs together the way they naturally fell and topstitched the crotch seam down in the front. I think at the time, that style of mini jean skirt was popular, so I almost cut the skirt off where the front seams met, but I decided I liked the long length. I also considered sewing a panel from the back to the front vent or using a contrast panel, but I didn't end up doing that. I think that would have limited my motion more. As it is, the skirt is narrow enough that I put a lot of strain on it when I ride my bike, so the front seam is ripping out a bit at the bottom.

In taking these pictures, I'm also noticing a lot of stains, so I guess I should wash it, huh? I don't wear this skirt a lot because of the biking difficulty, but I was on foot yesterday, and I wore it to an outdoor art fair and for walking around our neighborhood. I didn't get a picture with my full outfit, which included a cute straw hat. I think it's a cute skirt for a casual outdoor day, and it was perfect for yesterday's weather, which was a little cool sometimes and a little warm sometimes.

Two old shirts

I don't remember when I made these. The date on the pattern is 2000, so it was probably around then. Maybe the summer between my junior and senior years of high school? I really liked the wrap look on the back on view A of Simplicity 9269, so I made it up in this cute lily pad print.

Frustratingly, even though I cut out the sizes that should have worked at bust and waist, it was way too big. (This is when I learned that some patterns are better than others, and some are downright wrong.) I took in the side seams by about 5/8 of an inch each (that means the pattern that was supposed to fit me was actually 2 1/2 inches too big-a pretty big difference).

It was still a big too big, particularly in the bust, but part of the problem was that the neck was too wide, and there's not much I could do to fix that. The boatneck is not a very flattering shape on me anyway. I have worn the top a few times, but it's never been one of my most-loved garments. Of course, it's also a pretty crazy fabric pattern, so I wouldn't be able to wear it much, even if I loved it. I still liked the criss-cross, though, so I wondered if I could highlight that more by pulling it to the front. So I decided to play with it. I folded out the darts in the pattern (I'm so small-chested that losing them didn't matter much), cut a couple sizes smaller, and wore it backwards. For some reason, even though the criss-cross is symmetrical on the lily pad fabric, it's asymmetrical on this blue fabric (the bottom of the V-neck is on my right side), but I actually like it better that way.

This iteration didn't work perfectly, either. I think the shoulders are just too far apart, even in a size smaller than I should be wearing; if I ever try it again, I'll have to take a little bit out of the middle to correct for that. Also, the armholes are a little too tight. I also only wear this rarely, but that's because it shows my navel. I don't think it's appropriate to go to school or church with my navel showing, but yesterday I was going to the Art Car Museum for an artist lecture in the afternoon, and I thought it would be OK for my tummy to show a little.

I am glad that I've stayed the same-ish enough size that I can still wear these shirts, and I'm also glad that 17-year-old me was creative with the pattern. I had fun (and felt cute and a little saucy) wearing this yesterday.

Flashback dress

I don't know when I made this dress. 1998 sounds about right. It's definitely from an earlier era in my sewing, but about a year ago I rediscovered it when looking through a closet at my parents' house. I don't think I ever wore it much. It's a little too short for my taste (more so now than then), the neckline doesn't lie quite right on the left side (maybe hard to tell in these photos-we didn't take the time to take any good ones), crushed velvet is never really in style (or is it? I don't know these things), and it has almost no shaping in the torso, making it not ideal for a somewhat curvy lady like me. But despite those flaws, I liked it enough to keep it, and I actually wore it to dinner last week. I had just bought my first pair of leggings in preparation for my trip to Chicago, and I decided that the dress with the leggings would be modest enough. I also wore some new gray-beige shoes and an old-ish necklace. This is definitely not how I normally dress, but I thought it was a really fun, funky outfit. And I think the leggings also make it modest enough to ride a bike in, so I could even wear it to school!

By the way, I've never had leggings before, but I think these really make my legs look muscular. I'm going to have to keep that in mind.