A Pattern To Love

Several people commented on my dress yesterday, so I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about it. I fell in love with the pattern when I saw it on ModCloth, but it was almost entirely sold out — the only sizes left were about 10 sizes too big for me. I bought one anyway (picture 1), planning to take it in.

(Note, I wouldn’t do this while thrifting, since quantities in larger sizes are often very limited, and I want to leave them for people actually that size, but in this case, they had plenty in the larger sizes when I was shopping, and ModCloth also lets you ask to be notified when something comes back in stock. This dress is now entirely out of stock (I bought it last year, actually), but I’ll throw the link in comments, so you can get on the notify list if interested.)

After that, it took about an hour to take it in — I started by taking in the sides first, then adding new bust darts, then taking in below the arms, and finally hemming it to the length I wanted. It’s not perfect — I only had about an hour to spare, so this is what I could do in an hour, with a lot of trying it on at every stage, to make sure I was doing roughly the right thing. But I got it to a point where I was happy enough to wear it. (Picture 2.)

And I’d left 15 minutes, which was enough time to take the excess fabric from the hem, and make a matching mask. (You need about 6″x9″ for my standard mask pattern.) We’re still masking to teach at UIC, for the rest of this year, I suspect, and I do like giving my students something amusing to look at, since they have to stare at me a fair bit when I’m in front of the classroom. This felt like a very Mrs. Frizzle sort of outfit. (Picture 3, on campus.)

At some point, I may go in and do more alterations so it fits me even better; it’s still a little loose in the bodice and sleeves. I might make a coordinating headband from the extra hem fabric. And I’m not entirely sure I’m a Peter Pan collar kind of girl, so if I get brave and ambitious, I might actually try removing the collar and the white bands at the sleeves (which would really change the look of the dress, but I think in a way that’s closer to my preferred style).

But all that’s probably a project for next fall. This was good for now.