Romancing the Dress 3: The Dress Comes to Life

I was sure I'd finally come to terms with my tendency  to romanticize the dress. How many times have I reminded myself how little use I tend to get out of the dresses I've sewn over the past few years? 

Compare frock sewing, I repeatedly chimed to fellow sewists, to the time invested in a flattering pair of shorts, pants or one of my every day  embroidered tee shirts. Just calculate the cost per wearing, the cost being based primarily on the best use of my free time. Frequently I reflected that  as a part time student and independent free-lance worker, it's only practical to accept that a dress is not a worthwhile investment of my sewing time.

And then along came Vogue pattern v8810, and once more I was hooked. Even when I created the toille, I argued with myself about the value of the project.  Right up until I cut it out of three yards of black and off-white houndstooth, home dec fabric.  (It used to be that I didn't admit to using home dec for fashion sewing, but since I saw it featured for clothing in a Vogue Sewing Magazine, I realized I'm not the only one.)

Yes, I made another dress, and I love it. Now I just need to prove my time was well spent by getting lots of wearing time in.

The technical details are in my review at patternreview.com

Well Bust My Buttons! A Sewist Visits Victoria British Columbia

My friend Marilyn told me, with a laugh, that her mother used to take the buttons off her fathers worn out shirts before she turned them into cleaning rags.

Can you believe women used to bother to do that?

I must have produced my best dolt look. Don't you save the buttons from your husband's shirts?

I hadn't realized until then, that I've kept a habit that others associate with Depression-era hardship. As far as I'm concerned a button in the hand is worth two on a card, especially when it comes to having to drive twenty plus minutes just to buy six or seven plain white blouse or shirt buttons. I say, bring me your old, your tired shirts with buttons burning to be freed from their old threads. Those, of course, are the practical buttons, the ones I recycle from Dave's old button-up-the-front standard men's shirts.

Then there are the dreamy buttons I drip through my fingers, for the sheer pleasure of feeling the sheen and admiring the gorgeous designs. Those buttons are the girls I sew onto bags and purses, stitch brooch-like  onto  the top neckline of a shirt or jacket, or affix to the pocket of a blouse for maximum effect.

On our family vacation into the Cascades and Canada we squeezed in one day in the capital city of British Colombia, Victoria. Could I miss some kind of sewing related activity there? Well, I almost did. I got lost looking for Gala Fabrics (There's always next time, right?) but then I found myself (almost) walking past the Button & Needlework Boutique. There I got to immerse myself in a gorgeous collection of pure dreamery'esque buttons. And it turned out to be a durn good thing that I missed out on Gala Fabrics, because I spent over 60 Canadian dollars on beautiful buttons in about ten minutes. We are talking major embellishment potential. It's amazing what they pack into a small store, and the merchandise bears very little resemblance to the cards on the racks at my local Joannes. Can't wait to decide what blouses, purses and vests are going to sport these delightful ladies.

If we have buttons like these in California, I've never found them.

1001 Nights: Scheherazade's Peacock Purse

Scherazade's Purse Sewn by L.R. Shimer
Hot Patterns Vintage HotPatterns Hangbag Heaven Nairobi Handbag
Iman Home Fabrics, Punjab Peacock Radicchio

Do you laugh when people ask you... "But where do you get your ideas?" Ideas are not our problem, are they? I know that my head is tumbling full of them, and I bet yours is too. It's completing the projects inspired by these thousand and one ideas that's the challenge!

Our sewing stories are like the thousand and one stories that Scherazade told her husband. There's always another one waiting to be imagined. Still, I thought it would be fun, perhaps for the sake of the people who don't think the way many of us do*, to think about where the inspiration for each of my sewing stories comes from.

Do you recall that it was Scherazade's own idea to be married to the shahryar who was infamous for having already married and beheaded a 1001 wives? To my mind the man sounds like a power-mad brute, but Scherazade saw him as a challenge. She believed that he was just one crazy, mixed-up dude who, having been betrayed by one woman, had gone mad by love. Her plan was to keep him entertained by telling him story after story. Of course she told him that the stories were for her little sister, Dinazade. As the light of morning broke after a dramatic story filled night, Scherazade always managed to leave her most recent story hanging. Her version of story-telling therapy worked. After a thousand and one stories, the shahryar was cured. The couple went on to a happy life together.

Who'd a thunk it? Well, I guess marriage is always a chancy business.

I can fit four dvd boxes to go back to the library in my bag. I like to envision Scherazade, perhaps with help from Dinazade, packing her toothbrush and nightie in a bag much like mine, when she went off to take her chances on marriage. When I walk off to the library, or downtown to buy a box of bandaids, with my Scherazade-inspired purse hanging over my shoulder, the beautiful Rimsky-Korsakov symphony runs through my head. You can listen to it here.

Sewing Details: I finished creating Scheherazade's peacock purse last week. Bare Bones: It's made using a "Vintage HotPatterns Hangbag Heaven Nairobi Handbag" pattern. The material is designed by Iman Home Fabrics and is called "Punjab Peacock Radicchio". I bought my fabric on line. I'm not sure if I managed to cut it out of the half a yard the pattern suggests, because I had bought two half yard pieces. I sewed a simple tote for my daughter out of some of it. Also I wanted to have a lot of peacock eyes nicely displayed so I'm sure I used more fabric than I normally would, laying out the pattern pieces just so.

I also quilted, in the ditch, along the seam lines, using scraps of some type of cotton heirloom quilt type batting that I happened to have on time. It gives it a nice shape and heft. The lining is a jade green poly/satin I recycled from an old bridesmaid dress I found for free. Instead of the pocket included in the pattern, I cut off a small poofy sleeve from the dress and stitched it down inside. The sleeve had elastic at top and bottom. It works great as an inner pocket.


*Hey some of us are network/web thinkers and others are more focused and linear, right?