Garden Party: The Cloud Dress!

Have you ever sewn something that gave you SO much unnecessary grief? I have, and it was this dress.

The patterns I made in about 3 hours on July 5th and though the hand-printing was tedious, it was fun. Of all things, the stupid zipper tripped me up! This is how you learn the hard way to hand-baste the zipper into the dress. (Extra work, but it's worth it!)

So I hand-dyed this fabric from 2 yards of plain white fabric - assuming it may have been a poly-cotton blend. Who knows what the hell you're buying at that fabric store (2121 W. 21st St. in Chicago). At first, I was worried at it not picking up the Rit dye since it's made primarily for cotton, but it dyed just fine.

 Home-dyeing is soooo easy! I just throw it in a pot with water and boil away.

It's funny to think that this dress started from nothing - just a thought, a sketch, and a Photoshop manipulation.

Here is the original Photoshop edit:

This was created by throwing in this photo of my test-print and defining it as a pattern and creating a repeat. I hand-designed these stamps as well.

 Ta-da! I've been meaning to show off this little bag too - it was a gift from my friend Jane from her bag store in Brooklyn, NY -  Red Legend! We used to be co-workers at one point. I miss her!

The zipper still isn't perfect, but you can only see the flaws when you're up close. It's far better than what it had been about a week or two ago. Lesson learned: HAND-BASTE!  The cutout should have been hand-basted as well but it came out fine.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of this dress. It even has a short skirt underlining as well as a fully-lined bodice. It's lightweight for summer, though too bad it's almost October now. Next summer!