My African Princess Dress

Well, I did it. I bought the fabric, designed the dress, and let someone else sew it.

A couple weeks ago Mable, one of our translators here in Sunyani, Ghana, took a few of us World Racers to a fabric store. It was amazing! So many pretty fabrics to choose from! After admiring everything I left with only two pieces of fabric. . .

Six yards of this red fruit fabric. . .

And six yards of this green and burgundy fabric, covered in trees and flowers and little scrolls that say "dua kur gye enum a obu" (which approximately translates "A tree alone will fall, but if two trees stand together they will remain strong").

I decided to save the red fabric to take home (sometime next year, once I'm reunited with my sewing machine, it will be turned into something) and have the green tree fabric made into a dress.

Once everybody had picked out fabric, Mable took us to her dressmaker's shop. Here we sat down and were handed magazines showing us the latest Ghanaian styles to pick from.

After admiring the outfits in several of the magazines, I finally found exactly what I wanted.

This peplum top, lengthened into dress. I showed the picture to the head dressmaker and explained exactly what I wanted. "This shirt, lengthened into a maxi dress, with pockets." He then sketched out exactly what I described, took my measurements, and told me my dress would be ready in a week.

A week later I returned and tried on my dress. An under-seamstress was on hand to make minor adjustments until the dress fit just right.

I left that evening absolutely thrilled with my new dress, and very excited to wear it to church the following Sunday!

Wearing the dress, with new earrings and my hair all done up by my talented teammate, made me feel like a princess.

Which was fitting as I received quite a few compliments to the effect of, "You look like a princess this morning!"

I had so much fun going fabric shopping, designing, then getting to wear this dress!  And I even have fabric left over from it to take home and turn into something else as well!

As always, If you wanna see what else I've been up to in Ghana, and keep up with me over the next 6 months, check out my World Race blog!

All of the fabulous dress pictures are thanks to my talented teammate Katy Herder