Thursday, June 30, 2011

Once upon a time

This was a dress. It was a dress that made me look like a sack of particularly lumpy potatoes, however, I chose to forget that unpleasant fact and remember only that I didn't like the sleeves. So I remade the sleeves, tried the dress on, and all the memories came flooding back.

And the dress came off. Quickly.

And I took scissors to it before I gave myself the opportunity to do the inevitable: It's a nice dress, it's Liberty, that stuff's expensive, I'll wear it eventually, and I'll find a way to make it work. Right. I'm not that good.

The dress pieces sat around for a week or so while I attempted to locate my TNT skirt pattern, which was hiding in the depths of the workroom. I actually had pulled out a lot of my TNTs so I could trace them off onto cardboard to make for easier repeat usage, and then I lost the stack of patterns under an avalanche of fabric. Who, me, a packrat? Say it ain't so.

So . . . Sunday night I finally cleaned up my space, found my patterns and cut out this skirt. The dress pieces weren't big enough to cut the standard front and back pieces, so I did larger center pieces and narrower side pieces. I used the contrast fabric cut from the dress facings as an insert between the yoke and the skirt, and I used the inside of the tie belt as a border/binding on the bottom of the skirt, enclosing the batiste underlining left with the dress pieces. The pocket I carefully removed from the dress and reattached. Invisible zipper up the side and now I have something wearable from my Liberty, and a nice pile of scraps left over.

I wore it Tuesday with a white tank and a pale blue cardigan for my ever-arctic office. Much better than an unloved dress in my closet.

6 comments:

SEWN said...

cute skirt. great save!

SewRuthie said...

Yes the skirt's pretty hip, and I love your perseverance!

Valerie said...

Nice job! Glad you could salvage a skirt out of it. I like the colors.

renee said...

Great save. It's a really cute skirt.

Deepika said...

You are my hero! What a lovely skirt. And what is that pattern?

Carolyn (Diary of a Sewing Fanatic) said...

What a great save and a wonderful skirt! I love the accent pieces, it really makes the fabric sing!