It's Official!

I've entered!  :)

Will I finish on time?  We'll see.  3. More. Days....

BTW, I found a great link on Geni's blog.  It's for the Fabulous 40+ group.  And what a group we are!  :)

Hey Kardashian sisters...

I'm not fattening your wallet, but I'm keeping mine well padded!  I love some of the dresses in your Sears Kardashian line, but I'm NOT going to pay for them :) .

Instead, I created a knockoff dress in virtually the same style in a beautiful red lace on nude stretch lining.  See here:

And you know what?  It fits better than any garment I could purchase off the rack.  When I saw it in the store last May, the cost of the dress was about $60 or $70 on sale.  That's certainly not going to break my budget, but my inner snotty seamstress said, "I can make that same style, and make it better!"  It fits me to a tee and molds to MY curves.  Not the curves of the standard fit model for the K-line of Sears dresses.  Total price of my dress?  Let's see.  Stretch lace and stretch lining were purchased from Spandex House in NYC.  The amount of fabric used for the dress is about $20.  Thread and zipper?  About $4.  Total cost is $24.  My next version will be about $14 due to some drafting changes.

Here are back and side views:

Believe it or not, this was a "proof" garment.  I hesitate to use the term muslin or test garment because those evoke images or a mindset of a garment not meant to be worn except for fitting purposes.  Therefore, I call it a proof.  I drafted the garment to my exact measurements, felt pretty sure I got it right, then went about creating the dress to prove it fit, and subsequently created my "proof" garment.

Here are a few other views.  

And last but not least, a few movement pics.  Let's be realistic.  Movement produces a bit of wrinkles in a fitted garment.  This one is no exception.  The pics give an accurate view of how the dress is worn in real-world situation.  So yes, if you sit down and then stand up, you will have to re-adjust the dress.



I started this dress last May.  I created the pattern, and let it sit.  I sewed a little in June, then in July with bits of time I had available to me during the summer.  One of the things that took a while was handstitching the stretch lace to the stretch lining which served as the underlining.  There are 10 vertical seams on the dress so this process was not exactly what I would dub speedy.  I must have stitched up the dress at the end of the July because I referenced back to this post  about my feline sewing assistants and was still doing the tedious handstitching at that point.  From that point on it sat in my sewing cart as a UFO until I pulled it out in January resolving to get it done.

My dress was self drafted, and I did not use any commercial pattern for the design.  At this time, I'm not going to post how it was drafted because I want to test it out a few more times.  Right now I'm reworking the pattern and taking lots of pics to illustrate some of the steps.  I guess the best way to test it out is to use another body and draft the pattern based on those measurements.  I know my own body so it's easy.  Working it out on someone else's, maybe a few other bodies, is a good pattern proof.

But as for this dress, my first "proof" of a self-drafted pattern, I think it was a success.  It fits, it's flattering, and it's exactly what I envisioned it to be.  And I think my daughter is eager to get her hands on this dress for one of her college events.  I know there will be quite a few more versions yet to be made from this pattern.