Party People!

9:31 AM by Forrest 2 Comments A⁺ a^-

Sorry I haven't posted in so long! My computer completely crashed and after days of trying to find a computer repair place to fix it, I finally dug in last night to try to fix it myself and, amazingly, it totally worked! So I'm very excited to get back to blogging and reading other fabulous people's blogs! I've finished a few sewing projects and bought a ton of new fabric in the past few weeks, which I'll post about later, but this morning I was thinking about some of my favorite dresses I've ever sewn and I realized most of them are party dresses that didn't appear in Me-Made-March!

These are definitely not my most professional, beautifully finished pieces but I have such great memories in them that they've become my favorites! I also love that knowing how to sew allows me to create really special and specific garments for special times in my life. So here are my top 3 favorite self-made party dresses:

This first dress I made without a pattern in a few hours the night before my best buddy Brit's going away party in August. I now jealously stalk her on Facebook and drool over all her gorgeous pictures of Turin, Italy. So proud of my girl for getting her masters in arts administration in such a beautiful city! The dress is made of a teal jersey from JoAnns and I just kinda of cut some pieces and tried to make them fit, then cut some more pieces and fiddled with it until it worked... It actually is not too great looking close up but I wanted an easy, fun dress to wear out dancing and it fit the bill. Haven't worn it since but I think it will be good for going out in the hot Texas summer.

(An end of the night pic with my BFF Estrella, too bad the wind is not cooperating!)

This next dress I made for last year's Halloween. I found the fabric at JoAnns in the Halloween section and loved it, so I tried to figure out a costume around it. It's basically a bunch of black ribbons of fabric sewn in a wave pattern on the base fabric. After thinking about it for a while I decided it sort of looked the the body of a butterfly, so I made a tube dress and bought some cheapo wings. It's super itchy so I underlined it with a black satin lining fabric. I used Burda 7460, which went together really easily, the only issue was the thickness of the fabric plus the underlining. I also made shoe clips and a mask (it's covered in glitter which you can't tell from the picture). The boyfriend and I had been at a college football game all day, so we dressed up, hung out a bar for an hour or so and then called it an early night. We're notorious for leaving the party early, almost always to go home and go to bed! I often joke that we're 80 year olds trapped in 20-somethings bodies!

Finally, this dress is definitely in the top 5 favorite items I've made. It was made for New Year's Eve 2010, celebrated at the Zilker Club House in Austin, TX with 2 of my girls from college. I really wanted a solid sequined dress that was a little slouchy and not too tight. (I think Heidi wears something like this for New Year's in an old episode of the Hills). This definitely was the standout dress of the night considering almost everyone else wore black! The fabric is from Etsy, underlined with a grey lining from JoAnns and I used another Burda pattern, 7512, to get the slouchy look I was after. This dress was such a challenge! Sewing sequins is pretty much a nightmare of epic proportions and the construction of this dress is a little funky. My main problem with the finished project is the pooch created around the midriff area. I knew from the pattern that the dress would be pretty baggy there but the stiff sequin fabric made it more obvious than I thought (I went through a ton of pictures to find one that didn't make me look pregnant!). However, despite the weird bulge and the itchiness of the sequins (even with underlining) I love this dress! I really wanted to celebrate the New Year in something different and fun and this dress ended up being perfect and I got tons of compliments!