Sorting through the creations I receive I usually try to tie them into the season, something I've done that's similar, when I post but in today's case, I'm just craving a trip to the beach. Sirona gave me that beach scene in her after pic, so we're headed to the waves!! PS, Los Angelenos, I hear it's gonna be 85 today! Rest of the country...that just means spring is getting closer :) "I have loved following your blog since the day I first found it and it's so neat to see other's creations featured now that you have accomplished your 365 dresses in days. :)
I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the skirt before I started fixing it up, but when I had it on it was pooling on the ground. I never could find anything to go with it as a top because of the busy pattern so I decided to try my hand at dress making. I chopped off the bottom part two “layers” down. (This was made up of a patchwork of different squares that were in even rows. I had decided two of these rows would be enough to create a bodice.)
Let's see where my, my, my, my, my Sirona takes this!! (OK, I took the creative liberty to change Sha- to Sir-ona.)
I cut the elastic band off of this top part and ended up with a short loop of material to work with. I cut the loop (which was much wider than expected once I detached it from the elastic) down to a more workable size and then I attached the top of this piece to the top of the longer skirt piece left over from before so that the wider side, which was on the bottom before, was now on the top, making room for my figure.
It took a ton of tweaking to get the bottom part to evenly space the gathered fabric as I attempted to sew this part together. To get it just right I had to feed a long piece of thread back and forth through the fabric so it would have something to hang from while I scrunched it up and pinned it in place. Once this was done, I tried it on and pinned the straps - just some ribbon I had around - and the zipper to get an idea of how much needed hemming at the top of the dress.
Much pinning, repining, trying on, pinning again, and a bit of hand sewing later (my machine doesn't have the right foot for zippers) I managed to install the zipper and trim the extra fabric along the sides. All that was left to do was some hand stitching to secure the straps...
...and my creation was complete (I did fold one strap down and up again to shorten it and straighten the hemline out) - that's always an easy tweak in case the length is a bit wonky.
I was happy to wear it the very next day as we had gorgeous weather.
Thank you so much for the inspiration! Keep up the creativity!" (Here's Sirona's tumblr for more inspo!)
Love your beach dress S! It's awesome to see what you did with it!!
