A favorite dress lives on

Over the past two weeks, I've been refashioning one of my all-time favorite early-90s dresses into two new pieces of clothing. I wish there had been digital cameras back when I used to wear this dress, because my memories of it are so happy: I wore it to my nephew Sam's 1st birthday party (he's now a sophomore in high school!), and I wore it a lot when my husband and I were teaching in SW Oklahoma. My students thought I was very bohemian (though I don't think that's the word they used....). I bought it in a deadhead shop in Colorado Springs during a short stint teaching at Colorado College (where I also got my degree). It was a knee length sundress with an empire waist.

The dress has been too small for me since before Astrid was born, but I didn't have the heart to give it away, and I felt sad every time I saw it hanging in my closet. Now that it's a top and a little jumper, I can see (parts of) it all the time.

I used the skirt to make the top for me. I drafted the pattern myself: it has darts in the front and side panels, so that it's loose but not shapeless, and it has plenty of room for my tummy. I used scraps of store-bought bias tape for the neck and armholes (I didn't mean for the bias tape to show in front, but I was too tired to rip it out when I noticed my mistake...so it's now a design feature.) So far, I've worn it to work with my favorite black, bias-cut crepe skirt. I've been drafting/altering test versions of Kwik Sew 3338 to wear underneath this blouse (and others--now that I have a pattern I'm happy with, I'll make more of these woven tops--I have a couple more batik dresses that I'd love to rework).

The top part of Astrid's dress was the bodice of the batik dress. I took out about four inches from the center front, and made two deep tucks near the shoulder-blades. With scraps from my blouse, I appliqued fish onto the cotton/lycra skirt, and I added rick-rack seaweed on the back. Carrie's applique tutorial at Whole Cloth Designs showed me how to use freezer paper to make appliques lie flat. I was able to keep the binding on the armholes and neckline in place, so the whole thing was very quick to put together. This was good, because I decided not to be lazy about the hem: I fused it with Stitch Witchery and used a double needle so it would be really neat. (I usually just zig zag the hems on Astrid's knit clothes--doing it the nice way takes me twice or three times as long.)

I have one of my extra-special chest colds right now, so I've promised myself that I'll be very sedate today....no sewing, and *definitely* no cleaning (last weekend I scrubbed the dining room floor--it took three hours....). I'm going to sit, embroider, and maybe paint a bit with Astrid. Oh, yeah, and cough a lot.