A Devil in a Blue Dress?

The last week and a half has a been a hectic everyone gets sick in a row.  Two days Alex, two days Conor, then two days dear husband.  After everyone is better, dear husband goes and sprains his back. This has meant he's been out of commission since Friday.  It was a long weekend, and my have involved me muttering whilst walking the dog.  Anyway, busy family life + busy work = not a lot of sewing, which sucks, since I have three major sewing projects I want to get done before November 8- one of which is my Marine ballgown.  Well, of course, when one has deadlines looming, one makes a completely different dress.  I've been thinking about this dress for over a year now- since August 2013 to be exact, when I bought the trim on a Russian trim buying spree.

I am going to keep this post to mainly pictures, because I have some fabric to iron, dryel bag to find, and some pre-treating to do.  One of the perks of living abroad, is that I can have a housekeeper who comes twice a week.  One of the pitfalls is that if I don't put everything away before she comes, who knows where it might end up.  So let's take the dress in a little bit more?  It's Butterick 5556, with about four feet taken out of the hemline- my god what a lot of fabric it is- I believe it's a 1.5 circle skirt. (Can you have such a thing?  I don't know, all I know is that it's at least one full circle with all the extra taken out, so I can only imagine.

I am going to have to ask you to ignore the slight creasing and the belt slippage.  I took these pictures right as I got home from work, but I had to quickly change to a. walk the dog (who had missed her 4 pm walk because dear husband's muscle relaxer made him fall asleep), b. play with a cranky baby (see a. above), and c. make dinner.  I really wanted to take pictures yesterday, but did not finish the dress in time, mainly due to the ridiculously long hem.  If I remember correctly, I bought 4 meters of the bottom trim, so if I do my math correctly, that's 13ish feet of trim?  And this is all I had left

Yup, 8 inches, or in metric 20 cm.  I am working on working in metric.  I doubt it will ever happen, I still convert everything to imperial.  Don't even get me started on trying to convert kilometers to miles, I will say I am thankful that my car's speedometer has both, because it's just not natural.

Here are some closer ups of the details.  The coloring is off in just about every photo- it was already dusk when I was taking these, and therefore my camera was over compensating.  I haven't quite figured out to to consistently fix color in photoshop, it's a work in progress.  The fabric is a cotton sateen, with a weft interfacing.  I made two changes to the pattern- I turned the gathers in to pleats and I made a hem facing to help support the weight of the trim.

You might have noticed that I shot these pictures in the sewing room.  It is getting close to being done.  I am having issues with the rugs, so I need to buy the rubbery things that go under rugs, so that they don't move around.  I also have to hang the shelves so I can finish putting everything away and organize my fabric.  But it's getting there.  And I love the walls.  I just wish my landlord had never put in pink/red carpet.

Work in progress right?  At least it's usable and I have my big cutting board.  I am excited about the artwork that will hopefully be going up on the walls.  I need to still print out the photographs, but if I can get them to turn out, it will be awesome.  I haven't really made any art in the last several years, so it will be nice to have some new stuff.  Mostly I tend to decorate with my senior thesis photographs, way back from my undergrad years.  I minored in photography, so it's really a love of mine.   (Which is shameful and embarrassing that my blog photos aren't perfect, I really need to up my game.)  

Anyway, with a 1.5 circle skirt, one must have obligatory twirling shots and here is mine.

One last note- a question for you dear readers- which one do you prefer? The one on the left is a wool/cashmere blend and the one on the right is a cotton sateen with some stretch. 

Let me know what you think in the comments.  Until next time- happy sewing! 


P.S. Sorry mom- no pictures of the boys.  I promise next post.