The Glittery Tulle Skirt

 I despise glitter.

Ok, for some things it has its place. For example, I chose to put glitter in my sister’s hair for prom this year to make her look like a fairy princess.

But I hate glittery fabric.

Ok, sometimes it’s pretty. But it sheds. Everything becomes glittery when you use glittery fabric.

I despise it.

So when my sister found yards and yards and yards of glittery ombré tulle at the City Sewing Room?

“NO!”

“No, no, no!”

She ignored me and bought the tulle.

“That’s not coming to my house!” I said.

She ignored me and deposited it in my sewing room.

“I’m not touching that!”

She ignored me and moved out of state so I couldn’t return the bajillion yards of sparkly glitter shedding tulle.

I gave up.

And turned it into a skirt for her, like she requested. 

This won’t teach her not to bring me scarily glittery fabric in the future.

But I made the skirt.

And delivered it when I went to visit her.

It really didn’t take long to make. An hour or so one afternoon two days before I left home.

I didn’t use all the tulle, only about 2-3 yards. So I still have a ton of the stuff in my sewing room to destroy use.

I made a quick lining from a cotton/poly bland in my stash. Seamed up the center back seam of the lining, and both layers of tulle. Gathered the tulle onto the lining with my serger, and zigzagged all three layers onto an elastic waistband.

It came together beautifully and looks amazing on my sister!

Almost amazing enough for me to not despise glitter tulle.

Almost.

But not quite.

A Dress Full of Peaches (Simplicity 9105)

 More orange! Or, more accurately, peach. Lots of peaches in fact.

This dress is full of them!

Back in 2020, when I bought the fabric for my blueberry dress, I also bought a few yards of peach covered fabric. I’ve long loved peaches (actually I love just about any fruit, more on that this fall), so clearly I needed a peach dress.

It’s been quite a hit! Every time I’ve worn it out and about I’ve received compliments on it. The toddler I nanny loves it. So, I would say my assessment of needing a peach dress was correct.

I paired the peaches with Simplicity 9105, a 1950’s vintage reprint pattern. I believe I picked this pattern up at a sale around the same time I bought the fabric.

As marvelous as the peaches are, I thought the dress needed something to break them up, so I decided to use the shot linen, leftover from this skirt, for the collar and belt.

As, by the time I got around to making this dress last summer, I’d already used these linen scraps to trim my paisley Thanksgiving dress the year before, it was slim pickings. Quite a bit of piecing was required to make my plan happen.

On the plus side - I already had the belt done, since the same belt could be worn with both dresses!

I used the “detachable collar” piece from the pattern as my template for piecing together the linen collar, and I sewed the pieced together linen directly to my bodice facing, made out of the same fabric as the rest of the dress. Nothing detachable about this collar!

As with a lot of vintage style dresses, this dress features buttons down the bodice, but also has a side seam zipper. I contemplated eliminating the side seam zipper and figuring out a way to make it all front opening, the way I did with my thanksgiving dress and my lavender African print dress, but as this pattern didn’t feature a center front skirt seam, my brain didn’t feel like tackling that project. (I could have done something like a dog-leg closure, if my brain had felt like cooperating that day, but I had Covid at the time, so that wasn’t happening.)

Thus, the side seam zipper stayed.

Other than my permanent, rather than detachable, collar, my only other change to the pattern was added slanted pockets to the side front panels of the skirt. Slanted pockets are easier than inseam pockets when you’ve got a side seam zipper to deal with, and because of the aforementioned Covid, I was all about easy!

The dress was finished with dark green buttons down the front of the bodice, so it was all ready to wear once I recovered and could leave the house again!

Honestly, as annoying as being sick was, those 10 days I was home last summer allowed me to finish all sorts of projects! My coral necklace, the fiery orange dress, the Gryffindor dress, and even my 1830’s dress and pelerine were worked on that week. There are advantages to not being able to leave the house.

There was one other dress I finished that week, but here a year and some months later, I still don’t have pictures of it, so sharing that dress will have to wait! 

Meanwhile, I’ve got some more recent, and a few older, projects that have been photographed to share. Maybe we can even move on from the color orange now!

Maybe.

The Gryffindor Sundress

 Oh look! For the first time in what feels like ages, I’m sharing a dress that’s not orange!

September 1st is the day students go to Platform 9 3/4, board the Hogwarts Express, and return to the magical school for another year of learning. 

Thus, it seemed like the perfect time to share the Gryffindor dress I made last summer. 

The fabric was picked up on sale at Joann’s a few years back. I grabbed some of this black background Slytherin fabric to make my brother a few things, and snagged 3 yards of the Gryffindor to make myself a dress.

When I finally found time to turn the fabric into said dress last summer, the recently acquired Burda 6343 was at the top of my pattern pile, so I decided to pair the two together.

I loved the interesting bodice seamlines (hard to make out in the busy print), full skirt, and square neckline.

I was worried the neckline might be a little too low for an every day dress, so I raised it about an inch, both front and back.

As we were still living in the apartment at the time, I had yet to be reunited with my fabric stash. Thus, I had nothing on hand to line the bodice with, as directed by the pattern. So instead I decided to bind the neckline and armholes with some narrow red vintage bias tape I had on hand. 

I like the look, but I think it would have been better to line the bodice instead. There is a lot of fabric pleated into that skirt, and it would be better supported with a fully lined bodice.

Speaking of the skirt - it is full! 3 yards was just barely not enough fabric for this dress, and a directional print was not a good idea. 

The fabric was too narrow for the full width of the skirt pieces, so extra had to be pieced in on the edges. And my fabric scraps weren’t quite long enough for that, so there’s extra piecing at the bottom corners of both the front and back skirt panels.

The extra seams are completely hidden by the pleats, so no problem what so ever, but a 60” wide fabric would be a better choice for this pattern than the 44” wide cotton I used.

I decided to do an exposed black metal zipper down the back, and added a red ribbon at the waist.

The red ribbon actually wasn’t planned. I meant to wear the red belt from this dress with my new frock, but when I brought the dress back to my parents’ one weekend to be photographed by my brother, I realized I’d forgotten to pack the belt.

So I went through the stash of sewing notions still in my parents’ basement and grabbed a short length of red ribbon and sewed it on to the the dress.

While this was plan B or C, and not my original preference, I’m actually glad it went this way.

The finished dress is so comfy and easy to wear and it’s nice not to have to remember a separate belt to go with it!

Despite its few flaws, this dress has become one of my favorites this summer, getting worn several times a month.

Now that it’s time to go back to Hogwarts, and the weather will hopefully be cooling off soon (hopefully!). I’m sure that my Gryffindor dress will start staying in my closet for longer periods of time, but I’m already looking forward to pulling it out again next summer!