However, I didn't make the sort of fast progress on them that I had hoped. In fact, I ran into such roadblocks that I almost gave up entirely! I began my first dress, a spaghetti-strapped number with a gathered bodice and a flared knee-length skirt in beige, only to find that it was WAY too big for me! The bodice made any alterations seem rather daunting, and the poor unfinished piece sits folded in my closet for the day I gain 75 pounds (May that day never, NEVER come).
I began the next dress more optimistically. It is a halter-topped dress with, again, a flared knee-length skirt. The pattern is pictured below:
The fabric is a blue calico with an off-white flowery swirly pattern. The off-white swirls have a gradient of sorts, and in places turn darker to a pale-ish goldenrod. This is probably difficult to see in photos, but I am constantly looking down at my dress thinking I spilled something on it, only to realize it's actually part of the dye scheme. Ha.
Here is the partially finished version of the dress:
Unfortunately this dress also turned out RIDICULOUSLY too large for me, but fortunately the pattern lent itself better to easy alterations. 6 inches of tucks later, it fit reasonably well!
Now I always like to throw in a little personalization on each piece of clothing that I make, since I consider myself as more of a designer than a seamstress, and of course I NEED to express the uniqueness of HollyBEE in all of my creations. When I purchased the materials for this dress, I also purchased 3 yards of 4" wide satin ribbon in cream to sew above the hem of the dress. The ribbon is wired and edged with faux seed pearls, and looked like a perfect complement to the fabric's palette:
But when it came down to it, I really didn't like the final look of the ribbon over the hem (which looks a lot whiter due to the camera flash). And when I looked at myself in the mirror, I really knew where it needed to go.
The bodice of the dress looked much more well-defined in the pattern illustrations above, due to the benefits of watercolor shading, and my own semi-final product seemed rather lacking.
So I took the ribbon, rearranged it a bit, and in the end decided to use it in a flattering pattern around the bodice area of the dress to give it the something that was missing.
After removing the pieces of wire from the beaded edging that were poking into me, it turned out just the way I wanted it to! I was so pleased with it, I wore it to my dear friends' Anisa & Snowflake's wedding last week for its debut. This was an interesting opposite-coincidence, as the one time I decide to wear blue, the entire wedding party was decked out in red. There was one square dance in particular, where I happened to be surrounded by 5 members of the wedding party and another couple wearing outfits in the "red family" and I stuck out like a sore thumb for my blue dress. I must have done that on purpose by accident I swear!
Here is a photo I was able to wheedle out of the exhausted bride and groom at the end of the reception.
I would also like to thank the lovely Anisa for essentially being the inspiration for me to start this blog. She has a wonderful blog of all of her knitting projects, and is probably the most talented knitter I have ever met (grandmothers excluded, naturally). In fact, one of the only reasons I felt adequate enough to start a blog much like she has is because I do not knit and thus I feel like comparing our talents is as comparing apples to kumquats.
So thank you, Anisa, and MANY CONGRATULATIONS!
Love,
Holly
P.s. Congratulations as well to Snowflake, who although does not knit, is a great aficionado and also a great friend of mine. I am sooo happy for you both!
Thanks! :)
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