That Dress

Two weeks before Christmas Eve, I went to the fabric store for Little Black Dress material. The Monkeys' Christmas dresses were done, and I thought I'd try to make myself a "Uniform Project" number (see past blog entry). Could I do it in two weeks?

I sifted through the $2.99/yard fabric at the back of the store, finally settling on a black with threads of silver lightly through it. Festive, right?

Wrong fabric! I knew this as soon as I washed it. Wrinkle heaven! I can iron, but clothing that requires ironing gets worn once, washed, hung up, and gradually shuffled to the back of the closet. Only a dire clothing crisis will push me to iron something for myself. But this was an experimental piece of clothing, so I continued on.

I cut out the pattern. I happened to do this one afternoon at my mother-in-law's house, while Monkey1 was entranced by the History Channel and Monkey2 pushed an antique doll in an antique pram around the house and accidentally into every piece of furniture. As I cut out my pattern, I listened to my mother-in-law tell about the seasonal pattern books she used to get with one large sheet and all the patterns printed every which way on top of each other. She would use tissue paper to trace out all the pieces, deciphering the maze of lines, hopefully following the right ones. Tissue paper? I should save some from presents this year and keep so I don't have to cut up the patterns for the Monkeys' when I need to use the the smallest size.

The next morning that Monkey1 and Monkey2 were off at school, I ironed the material and laid out my pattern, making some changes. When the pattern had finally arrived in the mail, the reality of "double plaquet with hidden buttons" struck me. I am working on a vintage sewing machine, meaning no button holer attachment. I thought about this for several weeks and decided to put in a zipper instead. I had to change the front of the dress, not needing the double plaquet, and lengthen the dress to accommodate the 36-inch zipper I had found at the fabric store.

Lengthening proved perplexing. The hem was not straight, and neither were the side seams, of which there were many because of the "princess seams" silhouette. At first I added five inches straight down (and I literally added a piece of paper, measured and cut, to the bottom of each piece of the pattern), but that looked ridiculous, so I used my eyes and my straight edge to continue angles and curves, and then pinned and cut everything.

I ran two bobbins of black thread to start with and then had a fight with my sewing machine which ended after adjusting the tension of the top thread.

This Little Black Dress, which can be worn frontwards or backwards, closed like a dress or open like a jacket, with deep hidden pockets, fitted at the top and looser at the bottom, was easily the most difficult dress I have sewn. Yes, harder than the princess costumes for Halloween.

When I finished the dress on the eve of Christmas Eve, I hung it up and thought, "It looks like a bag." I promptly decided to ignore this unflattering response to all my hard work because it was late and I had no back-up plan.

I wore the dress three days in a row: church and family gathering Christmas Eve (family as in all of my husband's aunts, uncles, cousins, spouses, and kids), dinner Christmas Day (with about half the folks seen Christmas Eve), and church on Sunday. I was impressed that frontwards or backwards, the dress really was interchangeable, and the pockets were awesome, and even with my limited accessory options, I felt I was able to change up the dress enough that I didn't feel like I was the same as the day before. However, "the bag" notion reappeared whenever I hung up the dress or took it down. Part of this was due to how I lengthened it; I should have gone with straight down and not continued the slight inward curve of the pattern right at the hemline. Five inches of extension made a pear-shaped bottom of the dress' silhouette. Ugh! The other part of the impression is that this dress is a bag, a carrier of me, and a canvass for creativity, meant to be reshaped at the wearing, and not a stand-alone finished perfect dress on the hanger.

I've washed it. I've hung it up to dry. It's wrinkled. And I'm itching to get back to the fabric store and find a different material and try again.