Scalloped Heart Dress

It's been another two weeks of adventure in the realm of sewing for me.  Ages ago I had decided I would try to make a dress to wear to an upcoming wedding, and I'd found this great retro pattern that looked fairly simple.  I had made a mock up and a casual summer dress with the pattern (which...had problems with going wrong and wronger under another deadline), but I thought surely, the third time would work perfectly.  Ha!  Just goes to show nothing goes according to plan.

This is the dress I ended up with.  There's been a few late nights tearing out my hair and a ton of stitches regarding the skirt - the first draft of the dress ended up with an alarming amount of poof.  Like absolutely ridiculous amounts of poof.  With the clock ticking (I leave in 2 days and I had to leave time for actual packing and prepping to go) to a deadline of Sunday, I frantically thumbed through my patterns to find an alternative skirt.  So, in the end the dress looks not very much like my original pattern, but woohoo! - I have something to wear to the wedding.

These are the two patterns I based the dress off of.  It was a bit of  hack and slash to put those things together after the Poof Incident, though not to bad since the waistline is about the same area.  It wasn't as hard as I thought to tackle the pencil skirt, actually, though next time I'll know better about how to adjust the pattern to fit my hips better.  The hardest part I think was that the dress is now PRETTY SNUG right at the waist after I added in the zipper - it just took up a lot of the seam on the side.  Sadly I won't be able to gorge myself in the week leading up to the wedding, when I'm visiting New York - oh no!

I found a good scalloped edge tutorial which helped me out for the neckline.  This is the second attempt at a heart cutout for the back.  I totally forgot to attach a stiffer material to the back of the dress so it only really holds its shape if I'm not moving my arms around.  Seems like that heart cutouts are a pretty popular thing, judging from Etsy. :).


I'm very relieved it's finally done, so I took a dancing pic to celebrate.  The dance pose was inspired by the Chinese Dai ethnic group, which is very well known for their peacock dance.  The traditional costume includes a long narrow  sarong-style skirt, so the dance moves don't feature a lot of open flexibility in the hips.  My hands aren't so perfect but, eh. :)  Taken using the timer off my Canon 7D, lit with natural daylight and a ring flash.  Note to self to use a more powerful flash and/or ought to have used faster shutter speed to catch movement without blurring.

Next stop - mad amount of laundry, cleaning the house, and packing for the trip! :D