Grandma's Pearls

So this is my newest creation. It looks better on me, but as I fail to be a model or photogenic, I'd rather have it displayed this way. It is meant to be baggy, and then cinched at the hem. It creates an interesting bagginess at the butt, which I like! I had this little margarine container full of plastic pearl beads, and those long glass beads, so I had to use them all up! And I did!

This dress is another dress that is entirely sewn by hand! The fabric is knit, courtesy of the $2-per-yard section from Wal-Mart. I apologize to those of you who loathe Wal-Mart, but I am one of those poor people who rely on affordable stores like that to get supplies. Lucky for you the only thing I really get from there is fabric. Someday I'll have the luxury of buying expensive fabrics from good stores, but until then there's Wal-Mart. And I rather like the challenge of trying to transform cheap fabrics into something nicer.

Anyway, first I constructed this dress on a larger dress form my friend gave me. I put the dressform on the largest size and draped the fabric over it. Then I transported the dress to the dressform of my size, thus creating bagginess.

The back.

Beading details.

Pearls on the bow.

More beads!

50's Mexican Stripe Dress

So this is a dress I made a while back, around June I think. I used scraps from the Queer Fashion Show to fabricate the skirt of this dress. The skirt is made from strips of scrap fabric that I cut, then I sewed them together to form a really, really long rectangle. Then I gathered the fabric to form this full skirt, very reminiscent of the 50's. I think I just might be over my 50's obsession. I don't really make these anymore, thank goodness I finally outdid myself! I made so many dresses with the whole full-skirt-starting-at-the-waist thing. This one took a very long time, because I had to sew together the strips, and then press the seams flat.

This is a close-up of the skirt.

The side seam. I was obsessed with buttons and button loops, because personally I dislike the whole process of using zippers. Obviously I did not have enough buttons (I was using scraps and leftovers, and findings from my mom's sewing box and closet), and I had to use a fish button for the bottom because I ran out of white buttons. I like this improvisation! The fish ads to the tropical feel of the dress, if you can find the fish that is. Sometimes it gets buried in the gathers of the dress.