Well, I completely…

Well, I completely failed at that one. First off, my sewing table is a disaster. Witness below. It's kind of amazing that I actually tried to squeeze myself in there and sew a dress, but in fact, I did. It's not that I didn't want to clean up first, but the new cold has me tired enough that I've been strictly rationing my energy. If it's not essential or fun, I'm trying not to do it. So fine. But I thought it would be fun to take a skirt I never wore and turn it into a gorgeous bright desi-inflected 1920s dress to wear to the Retro Hugos. And it would have been fun -- if Saturday's four hours and several tries hadn't left me with a tube big enough to fit one-and-a-half of me. I just couldn't face ripping out more stitches and trying once again to sew it to the right fit. So today I ducked out to the neighborhood stores, found a cute black dress that will pass for flapper-ish (and which I can wear casually too, bonus) marked down to $30 (score!), picked up some accessories (feathers!) to complete the look, and called it done. As for the dress I could swim in? Sometime when I'm NOT leaving the country and NOT exhaustedly sick, I will take another stab at fixing it. I think it really wants to be a swing dress, with an inset zipper, anyway, rather than a tube dress with an elastic top. It may make it to its ideal form yet.