The O-Zone

I had a dress that I used to wear all the time, and I wore it so much it just sort of started to disintegrate.  I packed it away for a rainy day, so to speak.  Then one day I decided I’d try to re-create the dress by taking the existing dress apart and using the pieces to make a pattern.  I bought some machine washable material, shiny and smooth on the inside, fuzzy on the outside, like a suede but not a suede, and a pretty teal green, and cut out the pieces.

The thing is, the original dress had buttons and I have looked for the last 25 years for a button hole attachment for my Singer treadle sewing machine, without success.   I bought a zipper initially thinking I’d replace the buttons with that, but then I just didn’t want to go with a zipper.   So the project stayed in a box waiting for a really monsoon rainy day.

Disassembled dress parts. There is a bodice and a skirt. The bodice has a back, left front, right front, facings for the neck line and down the front, and short sleeves. The skirt is full and gored, and had seven pieces, plus pockets with two pieces each.

Since I know some of my projects can last years, I wrote on the dress pieces where they fit in relation to each other, and the pieces were attached to the new fabric pieces with pins, so they would be identifiable.

And so this project languished for many years.  Then one day I gave up looking for a button hole attachment and decided to go electric.  I got a new toy, a Brother sewing machine which comes with a button hole attachment, as well as all kinds of other cool things, and I got my project out of the box.

First was to make the bodice.

I put the front pieces right sides together on top of the back, and sewed the side seams and the shoulder seams together. So far, so good.

The new sewing machine was easy to use once I figured out how to make a bobbin and how to control the speed.  Super slow motion was the speed of the day.

Then I matched the inter-facings on the neckline and down the front of the bodice, and sewed those in place.  Then I turned the inter-facings in and sewed along the seam on the right side to give it some definition.

Next I matched up the seams for the various skirt pieces to their next door neighbor and sewed those seams together. I matched the pieces from the waist down as all the pieces are not the same length.

I figured I could straighten out the length issue on the skirt somewhere down the line so I didn’t worry too much about keeping the pieces the same length when I cut out the pieces, originally.    I now wish I’d thought a bit harder about that decision.

While I was matching the skirt pieces together I put the pockets in where they belonged.

Now the skirt was in one piece and I matched up the waist to the bodice, pinned it together, and sewed it together.  All the pieces were now attached to each other.  That was exciting.

  My first ever button holes made using a sewing machine! I figured out how many buttons I wanted to use, bought some, and did math. The idea being to make the buttons evenly spaced down the front.

It was fun making button holes.  I’d made one by hand before (once), and that was enough to convince me I had to have a button hole attachment.

Once this part is done, I’ll work on fitting the dress.  I’ve lost a lot of weight since I last wore this dress and modifications are going to be necessary.  I’ll put darts on the front, back and sides to bring in the waist, at some point. I think I’ll get the hem done first, which entails putting the dress on, and then marking the bottom for where I need to cut the longer pieces off to match the shorter pieces.  It’s way too hot to wear this dress now, so I’ll be waiting for cool fall weather.

And because I wanted to make it a little dressy, I bought some lace.

The sleeves are roughly three-quarters long, instead of the short sleeves of the original dress, since the material is suitable for cold weather, not hot.    I’ll gather the lace on on the ends of the sleeves, and around the hem of the dress to make it floor length.  The lace is also machine washable.

So that’s my project which has taken me about 15 years so far to get to this point.  I’ve tried the dress on and it will be a great winter dress, nice and cozy to wear around the house.