Wild Flowers Dress

Dress- Made by me

Sweater- Thrifted 

Tights- Target

Boots- Nine West Via Nordstrom Rack (gift from my parents)
Flats- Those old walmart ones

Earrings- Target
Belt- Thrifted
Bangled- Vintage, rummage sale
Bag- Anthropologie, gift from my parents.

I thought about calling this the Wrong Season Dress, because it is autumn, and it has been hotter than should be allowed, and I am still sporting cotton sundresses (fun fact: I wore cotton sun dresses in the snow last year. I just don't get cold very easily, and it is really irritating.). This is actually a muslin for another dress, so I will spare you most of the construction details for now, but there are some things I did differently on this one after I got the basic fit and pattern down. (P.S. The other one is going to be the coolest dress you'll ever have seen. The End.) I ended up wearing this one to Oak Glen this past weekend. Even though the colours are a bit more Spring-y, I think it actually ended up being a little autumnal.

Another good name would be The Perfect Dress, because this is seriously my favourite dress that I have ever owned (up to this point!). It goes with everything and can be styled anyway and it always looks good.
(The day did require a change of shoes/I haven't worn heels for over a year and am still getting used to them again.) I've worn it more times than I should have this week and if I could have gotten away with it, I'd have worn it everyday. I definitely need to make up a few more of these!

More Sewing details (and pictures) after the break.

Dress Details:

Pattern- my own

Fabric- Vintage king size bed sheet- $3

Notions- vintage zip from stash, bias tape from stash

Time- Honestly about 4-5 hours. It's was a quick stitch.

First Worn- October 21 2012

Wear Again- I've worn it three times already.

Total Cost- $3

One of the many ways I have worn this dress so far. Last night when I took these I realized I had a blouse that would be great underneath this dress! Yay for versatile clothes!

The fabric was an old sheet  I found at an Estate sale a while back for $3. $3! That's all this dress cost me! And I still have so much fabric left! I used a zip from my stash that just happened to match perfectly. That is why I hoard vintage sewing supplies. I also French Seamed this whole dress. Not something that you would normally do on a cotton (this is actually a cotton poly blend (as are most sheets from this era) but the cotton content is higher so I'm okay with that!), but I've really wanted to do French seams for a while now and I gotta tell you, while there is a few extra steps to making them, they're super easy and look so pretty. Okay, they're easy until you get to the inseam pockets. Never doing that again! But recently I've been wanting to focus on my garments being pretty on both the outside and insides, so I'm going to be experimenting with seam finishes. So for, everything but pockets, this one is a keeper!

Pretty inside and out!!

I used some pink hem tape (also from mah stash) as a facing for the arms and neckline initially, but my machine was having some tension issues and it just didn't look as polished as I'd have liked. So I bought a package of matching bias tape and plan on changing that this weekend.The other version of this won't have a squared neck, but again, once I had the fit down for this dress, I decided to mix it up a bit. The next version will have better placement of the print so as to avoid this whole blooming boob thing... I didn't even catch that until I had the whole bodice put together and it was 2 am and I was not happy. Alas, lesson learned. My mother assures me it is not noticeable, but it does still irritate me.

Another cool detail is the way I put in the back zip. I've seen this on a few vintage dresses and love it, so I gave it a go. I'm thinking of doing a tutorial on how to insert a zip this way, but it is super easy! Plus you can zip it yourself and it looks cool. As for the pockets, I was going to do slash pockets for this initially, but then I kinda got lazy and just did side seam pockets (which of course I then over complicated by doing French Seams on them... Good job me!). Which is honestly fine, I think this way is less distracting from the print. I really like this dress guys. it's just the right amount of sweet and is easily dressed up or down. Plus it's just so happy! Yay for Happy Clothes!