a dress, a form and a crinoline!

This was actually supposed to be pajama bottoms...  I'd drafted a pattern, washed the fabric, laid it out, and then something about it started shouting CLOWN PANTS!  CLOWN PANTS!  THESE WILL LOOK LIKE CLOWN PANTS.   Its hard to tell from the pictures, but this is red shiny knit with white polka dots, and while I am all about silly, odd and altogether strange, this just wasn't my brand of fun.    So, the fabric and I communed for a while, and it informed me it wanted to be a dress.   A stretchy, almost slinky summer dress that is wildly inappropriate for the weather and unlike anything else in my closet.  The fabric was most pleased. I was a bit skeptical, but I ended up using the bodice from Butterick 5350 and the skirt from New Look 6886.

By itself, the dress seemed a bit plain, so I tried pinning on trim and buttons -- which was cute, but a little ... too cute.  I'm not sure, but I may just go with the buttons.   I also decided I liked it better with a crinoline, but the ones I have are navy (which is far to short, even once I get around the hemming the dress) and the turquoise one.   This particular combination struck me as almost frighteningly patriotic and more than a little costume-y. Now, the sensible choice would be to make a white crinoline, so it would go with everything. but, I have decided I want red!  Will it work with anything else?  No.  But it will be a great big pile of awesome.


This got me to thinking that I very rarely wear the crinolines that I already have... and that if I was going to make a third, I really needed to start incorporating them into my every day life, so I wore the turquoise one to work today.   (For context, I do engineering R&D, and most of my colleges are in jeans and tshirts, but at this point they are used to me showing up in flowy sundresses, so no one said a thing.)   I felt a little costume-y, but I usually do in this dress, so its hard to make a real judgment on how much of that was due to the fluff.  

Random note: I can take credit for the dress, the crinoline (of course)  and the belt.   Huzzah for me!








As requested, I give you the dress form of DOOM.   It still needs to be reinforced, cropped, stuffed, covered, etc and so forth...  However, I haven't been able to face it quite yet.   Not sure how deformed it is from a couple of days on a hanger, but we're going to think happy thoughts.